The Beginning of Existence
by Tonight's The Night
Summary: When Fujitaka finds a nameless boy in the country of Clow, how will it change his simple life as an archaeologist? And why can't this boy speak despite his obvious intelligence? The story of how Fujitaka became Syaoran's father. Now Complete.
1. A Stormy Start

_Author's Note:_

_I know I shouldn't be starting another fic right now, but I can't seem to stop myself. _

_I got this idea when I was writing my drabbles. It occurred to me that there was very little fanfiction detailing the relationship between C!Syaoran and his father, Fujitaka. So this will be a short series in which I delve into their relationship and explore C!Syaoran's childhood in Clow._

_First section is in Syaoran's POV, before he was given a name. The rest will be self-explanatory._

* * *

><p>1. A Stormy Start<p>

The first thing the boy was aware of was the rainwater splashing his hair.

Something surfaced inside him, a preternatural awareness that had been absent a moment ago, an assurance that he was _here_, that he'd somehow flickered into existence. In those first moments, he had no concept of memory, no idea that anything had come before, or that anything would come after. But after a few minutes of having cool liquid drip down his face and arms, those concepts set themselves in his mind, as if he'd known them all along.

He was here. He could remember the last few minutes. He existed.

_Where is this place? _he wondered, though the thought didn't come in words so much as a feeling of wary curiosity. He didn't have words, didn't understand the concept of language. After all, he'd only started existing a few minutes ago.

The ground beneath him shifted when he moved, made up of unstable particles of rock. He brushed his bare foot across the gritty mass, feeling the grains slip between his toes. They were damp, melding together in a squishy soup rather than the dry particles they'd been a moment ago. He made the connection between the liquid falling from the sky and the new condition of the sand. Cause and effect.

The boy sat there a moment more, only moving when the chilling rainwater grew uncomfortable. Instinct brought him to his feet, though it took him a moment to relate that motion—the tug and pull of muscles he'd never used before—with the sudden shift in how he perceived the world. After a few tottering steps, he settled into a relatively agile walk, moving over the sea of sand. If he stood in one spot too long, the damp sand started rising up and taking hold of his feet. Twice, when that happened, he tried to step out of the mass and fell onto his face.

Pain. The impacts hurt, shaking injuries he hadn't known he'd had. He didn't like it.

Another few steps, and his eyes fell across a lighter patch of sand, under an awning. After a brief hesitation, he stepped onto this pale sand and found it remarkably dry. The texture was different under his feet, less inclined to clog the space between his toes.

He stood there a while, absorbing his surroundings. A scent permeated the air, separate from the strange smell of water on sand. The cloying fragrance filled his nose and made his stomach rumble. When someone emerged from the building he'd sheltered next to, a strong wave of the smell hit him. His legs propelled him toward its source automatically, instinct driving him to seek out food. He slipped when his foot came down on the wet sand.

The person carrying the package—a brown bag he would later associate with baked goods such as doughnuts and cookies—glanced over as he hit the ground, then retreated a few steps. She watched him for a moment, the corners of her lips pulling down, then hurried off, faster than his short legs could follow.

The boy stood in the rain a moment more, letting the cold water seep into the white bindings wrapped around his body. The fabric, rough to the touch only minutes ago, was now sodden and drooping, sagging down his flesh. When he retreated under the awning again, he found the wet bindings made his skin clammy and removed even the small relief of the dry spot. He moved on.

He tired after just a few minutes, and sat down beside a brick building. He curled his legs up so they touched his chest, trying to preserve what warmth remained to him. Every moment of his existence so far had consisted of some sort of discomfort. It varied only by degree.

The boy watched people pass by, holding pieces of cloth over their heads to stave off the rain. Some gave him passing glances, while others ignored him entirely. The glances seemed to be the most anyone was willing to give him, though, so he thought nothing of it. Only when he saw a face staring back at him did he begin to wonder.

The staring face belonged to a man. His pale brown hair seemed to have darkened a bit with rainwater, just like the sand. In front of his eyes were two transparent disks, bound together by a thin tendril of metal and secured to his face by two other projections sitting on his ears. The boy briefly wondered if the strange structure could be removed, or if it was permanently attached to the man's face.

The man watched him for a few seconds, longer than any of the other strangers who'd watched him. The boy looked back, then down, resting his forehead against his knees in another attempt to warm himself.

Since his head was ducked, the only indication he had of the man's approach was the soft brush of footsteps against the sand. When they got close, he looked up again. Something brown fluttered in the air above him, writhing as if alive. He flinched away, then let it come down on his head. The texture was rougher than that of the clothes he wore, and the material heavier, but it was recognizably fabric. The boy froze for a moment, unsure how to react, then looked up.

The man's lips curled up around the edges, the first time the boy had seen such an expression. The man's lips parted, and a series of sounds came out, nonsensical to the boy's ears.

When he didn't react, the man frowned. A moment passed, and the boy wondered why the man had removed his cloak when doing so left him exposed to the bone-chilling rain. Like the garbled syllables, the action made no sense.

The man extended one hand, palm up, so it rested a foot away from the boy's face. After several seconds, the boy reached out and took it, pulling the cloak tighter around himself. The man hoisted him to his feet, catching him when he nearly tripped over the sand. More sounds rang out amidst the pouring rain.

He didn't answer them, merely following when the man led him away from the brick building.

* * *

><p>Fujitaka didn't know what to do. The bandages wrapped around the boy's face and limbs suggested either abandonment or abuse. The distinct lack of comprehension seemed to indicate some underlying emotional trauma as well, something that had wiped clean the boy's understanding for the world.<p>

Nevertheless, Fujitaka decided to bring the boy to the police station, expecting that, if he had not in fact been abandoned, his parents had probably filed a missing persons report.

The boy—no older than seven or eight—had little aversion to following him. The only resistance he put up was when they passed by the section of the marketplace selling fruits and other fresh food. The boy paused, seeming to forget they were walking, and stared at the array of fruit, face filled with unconcealed yearning.

Fujitaka hesitated, unsure if he should insist they go to the police station to alleviate the fears of the boy's parents or if he should spend the extra couple minutes to buy something for the boy, knowing his family was likely in a panic. When the boy lifted his tiny hand to his stomach, Fujitaka's resolve crumbled. "Would you like something to eat?" he asked, leaning down so he was eye level with the boy.

The child glanced at him, then returned his attention to the food.

_Does he not understand? _Fujitaka wondered. After four months studying the ruins, he was familiar enough with the language of Clow to be understood by the majority of its people. Perhaps the boy's family were tourists here, and didn't know the language. That would explain why the boy reacted to the sound of his voice, but not his words. _That could complicate things._ _If his family doesn't speak the language, it's possible they don't know where to file a missing persons report. _

He sighed, then moved to the market stall. The man there was halfway through packing up, the rain ruining his chance at business for the day. "Excuse me," Fujitaka said, stepping forward. The man looked up. "Are you still open?"

The man shrugged and set aside the stack of baskets he'd been about to put away. "Sure. What do you need?"

The archeologist surveyed the produce, then pointed to a basket of apples. That seemed like a safe enough choice, given how little he knew of the boy or his eating habits. "Two of those."

The shopkeeper murmured a price. Fujitaka pulled a few coins he'd earned from examining the ruins from his bag and exchanged them for the fruits. He handed the larger apple to the boy, who looked at it in confusion for a moment before biting into it. Something like surprise lit up his face as the juice squirted out between his teeth.

Fujitaka pocketed the other apple for later and started for the police station again, taking the boy's free hand to make sure he was following. The rain lanced at his skin, the desert downpour even more overpowering without his cloak. Though this was technically the rainy season, Fujitaka had only seen one other rainstorm, less severe than this one. Like the stark differences in desert temperatures before and after dark, the contrast between the dry heat and chilling downpour made this climate seem almost bipolar.

They walked in silence to the police station. The man behind the desk glanced up when they entered, obviously wondering what a foreigner and a seven-year-old were doing here. "Yes?"

"Hello," Fujitaka said, wiping his slick hair away from his eyes. "I believe I've found a missing child."

The other man looked at him in confusion, then studied a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. "We haven't had any missing children reported recently. Do you know his name?"

He shook his head. "He won't speak."

The other man stepped around the side of his desk and knelt down in front of the child. "Can you tell me your name?"

The boy stared at the other man for a long moment, then dropped his eyes to the apple core in his hand. He bit into it, consuming the seeds along with the flesh.

"I don't think he understands the language here," Fujitaka murmured.

The man tried the same question in several other languages. Fujitaka recognized most of them from his travels. When none of those prompted a response, the officer stood. "I can't tell what country he's from, or if he's even capable of speech. If you'd like, we can keep him here for a few days to see if someone comes looking for him."

Fujitaka nodded. "Perhaps that's for the best. Is there anything else you need to know?"

"Nothing we can't discern on our own. Thank you for bringing him in."

He bowed and started for the door. Almost immediately, he felt something tug on the fabric of his pants. He looked down to see the boy's hand wrapped around the loose fabric by his knee, the remainder of the apple core all but forgotten in his other hand.

Fujitaka pulled the second apple from his pocket and offered it to the boy. A slight shift in the child's features seemed to indicate that wasn't what he'd been looking for.

"He seems to have taken a liking to you," the police officer said after a moment.

"I can't see why. I've only known him a few minutes."

The boy looked up at him, a flicker of desperation in his chocolate brown eyes. He drew the cloak tighter around himself.

Fujitaka frowned, heart split between staying here until someone claimed the boy and going back home so he could prepare for tomorrow's excavation.

There was a chance the boy's parents would not show up for several days. With as little money he earned from his archeological digs, Fujitaka couldn't afford to take time off. Besides, the police here were good people. They would feed and care for the boy until his family returned to him.

He knelt down and took the boy's free hand between his own. "I have to go now," he said, hoping his tone conveyed his apologies since the boy didn't seem to understand his words. "But I'll check in tomorrow, and the next day, until your parents come to pick you up, okay?"

The boy stared at him, then looked down, hands dropping to his sides. Fujitaka stood and bowed to the police officer he'd charged with caring for this child. "Thank you. I'm sure his parents will come by soon."

The officer bowed. "Of course."

Fujitaka turned to leave. This time, the boy didn't try to stop him.

* * *

><p>When the brown-haired man left, the stranger in the blue coat took his hand and led him over to a bench. The stranger murmured something before patting the boy's shoulder and returning to the desk. There, he selected a long, thin instrument from a cup and began scrawling things across a flat, white sheet.<p>

The boy sat there, clutching the red, round fruit the other man had left him with. Something stirred in him, similar to the desire he'd felt when he'd seen the smooth fruit, but tinged with something darker. It was like the pain in his stomach a few minutes ago, before he'd eaten. A yearning.

There was nothing to be done about it now. At least, nothing _he _could do about it. He thought about going out into the storm to follow after the man who had brought him here. There was no one else who had interacted with him, and now that the contact had been broken off, he wasn't sure how to handle himself. Mimicry wouldn't work. The only other person in the room had buried himself deep in his strange, abstract drawings, only occasionally glancing up to verify that he was still sitting on the bench.

The boy bit into the second apple, discarding the remainder of the first's core at his feet. After his teeth had closed around the hard black seeds in the middle, he'd decided he would eat around those instead of trying to consume them.

After a time, the man in the blue uniform walked over to pick the discarded fragments of apples off the floor and throw them in a green bin a few feet away. The boy watched, making a mental note to put all his future apple cores in such receptacles.

The man returned a moment later and extended a hand to him, just as the kind man had done after laying his cloak over his shoulders. The boy pulled the heavy fabric tighter around his torso, cherishing the warmth it afforded him. The uniformed man opened his mouth and sounds came out, like they had when he and the kind man had interacted. After a brief hesitation, the boy took his hand and allowed the unfamiliar man to tow him to another room. Here, the man presented him with a soft piece of cloth. When the boy did nothing, the man took it and used it to scrub the rainwater out of his hair. Understanding, the boy took it back and did the same, ridding his skin and hair of the cold water.

The man made more sounds, watching him for a reaction.

He began to wonder what the sounds meant to these people, and whether or not they should mean something to him. But the liquid syllables ran by too fast to comprehend, and after a few seconds, the boy stopped trying to discern their meaning.

The man exhaled, the corners of his mouth pulling down. After pondering the shift, the boy decided these changes in expression must mean something, if the sounds didn't. He tried to piece the meaning of the frown together by the reactions of the people he'd seen so far. They'd all been soaked by the rain. Was the frown a signal of discomfort? Then again, this time it had been in response to his lack of an answer. A signal of displeasure, then?

The boy pulled his own features into a frown, wondering if the movement was supposed to cause some reaction inside. He felt no different.

The man made more sounds, his lips moving rapidly as he rapped out the strange syllables. When he received no response, he exhaled and took the boy's hand, leading him back to the room where they'd first entered. As they abandoned the interior room, the boy realized the constant _tap _of the rain was louder here. Across from him, the raindrops splattered against some invisible barrier in the wall, leaving tiny streams to run down the surface. He watched this with avid interest, learning about the behavior of liquid.

But eventually, even that lost his interest. He stared at the floor awhile, then the ceiling, then the walls. Since nothing moved there, those things became mundane, too. His mind began to drift back to the man who'd wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. It had seemed such a minor action to the man, as if he'd done it without thought, but to the boy, the gesture meant so much more. A relief from cold, the first pleasant stimulus he'd felt since arriving here. Doing so must've also exposed the man to the cold water, leaving him to shiver until he found someplace to shelter.

The boy could think of no reason why someone would willingly expose themselves like that. What if the dampness harmed the man permanently?

He wrapped the cloak around himself and laid down on the bench, closing his eyes against the troubling thoughts. There was so much he didn't know—even the hour sitting here had taught him things he would've never come up with himself—but he knew he didn't want that man to be hurt because of him.

As he slipped deeper and deeper into his musings, one thought solidified in his mind: when the storm abated, he would search for the man and return his cloak, so that next time it rained, the man wouldn't have to be cold.

The rain beat harder on the translucent barrier, strangely reassuring despite its uncomfortable effects. The last of the boy's thoughts slipped away, and for the first time since he'd come into existence, he slept.


	2. Learning the Language

_Author's Note:_

_Well, my trip to Chicago starts Saturday morning, so this is probably the last update you'll see for about a week. I'll be writing this story through the rest of the month, along with my Tsubasa drabbles, and then I'll continue the rest in April, when I(hopefully) have more time to write._

* * *

><p>2. Learning the Language<p>

Fujitaka wiped the sweat from his brow and returned his attention to the etchings in the wall. "These are the same runes that were inscribed above the doorway," he told his colleague, holding up a photograph of the etchings he'd examined this morning.

Kentaro nodded, adjusting the strap on his forehead so the flashlight illuminated the runes. His boyish smile was visible even in the dim light. "What do you think it means?"

Tracing his finger over the stone—lightly, so as not to damage the markings—Fujitaka repeated the question to himself. A few of the symbols were vaguely familiar, probably derived from the object they were intended to describe, but not enough for him to comprehend the meaning. "I don't know. I've never seen writing quite like this." He moved his index finger over one symbol. This one was symmetrical, two right triangles facing away from each other. Thinner lines had been carved from the hypotenuse, stretching toward the center. A pair of wings, he guessed. But that could mean anything, from a literal pair of wings to an abstract concept like freedom or heaven. Until the research team deciphered more of the letters, he wouldn't know.

He recorded these in his notebook, being careful to note even the minor details. Then, he took a picture. Something to back up his drawings, in case anyone ever questioned their validity.

Someone called for them from the top of the steps. "It's dusk. Time to head back."

Fujitaka smiled to Kentaro, tucking his notebook away in his bag. "I've got to get going," he said quickly. "There's someone I need to go see."

One of Kentaro's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "Oh? Has the great Fujitaka found a woman to settle down with at last?"

He chuckled. "No, nothing like that. I met a lost child yesterday. I wanted to check back with the police to see if they've found his parents yet."

"Yesterday? But it was storming all afternoon! You shouldn't be out in those conditions."

Fujitaka slung his bag over his shoulder and started up the stairs, moving over them as if each step was a priceless artifact. Until it could be concluded otherwise, they were. These wing-shaped ruins were a discovery on par with the pyramids he'd investigated in the desert south of here. "Exactly. And if _I _shouldn't be out in that weather, neither should a seven-year-old."

"So . . . Was he lost, or abandoned, or . . . ?"

"I don't know. He didn't speak."

Kentaro's lips curled down in an uncharacteristic frown. "If he was mute, his parents might have decided to abandon him. If they were poor, and couldn't afford water . . ."

Fujitaka looked over to his colleague, shaken. But he had to admit, even in this peaceful country, it was possible. In the desert, water was more precious than gold. Having an ample supply of water to bathe or cultivate fields was a mark of wealth. Though their team of archaologists had secured a promise of water from the royal family for the duration of their stay, the impact of the sullen faces of those who stared at the inaccessible fountains had not been lost on him.

The storm had brought temporary relief to the desert, but if the boy's family couldn't supply themselves with water during the rainy season, what hope did they have for the rest of the year? And if the boy really _was_ mute, that would only make the choice easier for them.

_No, _he thought. _That can't be true. No one can deny a child such basic needs. Surely, if his family was in such a dire situation, someone would help. Surely. _

They reached the top of the stairs, where the corridor opened up into a vast, circular room supported by stone pillars. A massive decoration marked the floor here, the only adornment in the otherwise empty room. This mark, carved of lighter stone than the rest of the floor, was symmetrical, like the image Fujitaka had identified before. Unlike that tiny image, however, this one was carved with graceful lines and great care, spreading out in a defined shape clearly meant to suggest wings. _Wing-shaped ruins, wing-shaped floor patterns, wing-shaped letters . . . It has to mean something. But what? _

He sighed, lifting his arm to stave off the gust of chilly wind that pierced his light shirt. The desert turned unbearably hot during the day, but as soon as the sun set, the temperature declined sharply. The thin sheen of sweat he'd accumulated after a day of examining the ruins now stripped away his body heat as reliably as ice water. He hurried over to the trough where the team stored their water and refilled his canteen to the top, suddenly anxious that the water wouldn't be there tomorrow.

"See you later, Fujitaka-san," Kentaro called, waving as Fujitaka abandoned the cluster of people.

Fujitaka hurried through the bazaar, pushing through the evening rush of people. He paused at one stall to buy bread, then decided to purchase an extra loaf in case the boy he'd found yesterday was still waiting at the police station.

He walked quickly, hoping to get out of the rapidly cooling air as soon as possible. When he arrived at the station, the man behind the counter glanced up. "Hey, I remember you," he said, though Fujitaka only had vague recollection of the man's face from their encounter yesterday.

He bowed. "Did that boy's parents ever show up?" he asked.

"Nope. Haven't even gotten a bird from the nearby village. No one seems to be looking for him."

A lump rose in Fujitaka's throat, part pity and part concern. _Kentaro can't be right, _he told himself, trying to reason that the other man's youth contributed to his cynical view. Barely in his twenties, Kentaro was likely still focused on the obstacles in his life, not the moments of warmth. _The boy's family will come. They must._

Fujitaka found himself asking, "May I see him?"

The officer shrugged and strolled over to the door behind the desk. He whistled twice, then propped the door open wider.

The boy stepped across the threshold, eyeing the hinges warily as he passed. The pale brown cloak Fujitaka had swaddled him in yesterday trailed behind him like a cape.

"There's someone here to see you," the officer said. For the first time, the boy looked up. The eye that wasn't covered by bandages widened, pupil dilating slightly. After the briefest hesitation, the boy hurried up to him.

"I brought you something," Fujitaka said, kneeling down so his face was level with the boy's eye. He held up the small loaf he'd purchased at the bazaar in silent offering.

Two tiny hands reached out and wrapped around the sides of the loaf. The boy clutched the pastry to his chest, holding it like it might be taken away at any moment. The action forced the boy to let go of the edges of the cloak, displaying his clothes and arms for the first time since walking out of the back room. Fresh bandages ringed both arms, though some of the less severe scrapes had been left uncovered, making his condition look a bit less abused. The bandages around his left eye, sodden after the rain yesterday, had also been replaced. He wore a new shirt, the damp one from yesterday replaced by someone here at the station. The only thing that wasn't new was the cloak.

The boy stared at the bread a moment longer, his expression quizzical. Finally, he lifted the loaf to his face, sniffing it before deciding it was fit for consumption.

His hesitation was rather . . . endearing.

After the first bite, the child looked up at him. His expression was blank, his gaze unnaturally direct for a child. From what Fujitaka had observed of children, they were generally inquisitive creatures, prone to rapid mood swings as well as unquestioning acceptance. But as those dark eyes stared back at him, Fujitaka saw something haunted in them, as if some fragment of darkness, unknown to the boy, had embedded itself deep in his psyche.

The boy went back to eating his bread, silently accepting the offering. Fujitaka pulled his glasses from his face and wiped the sand from the lenses with a piece of cloth he'd tucked away in his pocket. When he put his glasses back on, the boy was staring at him.

Experimentally, he removed his glasses again, then replaced them. The boy's eyes were wide now, shocked. _Does he think these were permanently attached to my face? _Fujitaka wondered. If the boy didn't understand such a simple fact at this stage in his life, that either indicated he had some underlying mental problem, or amnesia.

The boy reached out and plucked the glasses from Fujitaka's face. Even with his now-blurred vision, he could see the boy lift the spectacles to his own face, manipulating them with one hand while the other clutched the loaf of bread. As the lenses covered the boy's eyes, his head twitched to the side.

Fujitaka extended one hand, palm up. "Can I have those back?" he asked, keeping his voice soft since he doubted the boy understood him. Perhaps there would be time to teach the boy a bit of the language, if his parents didn't return.

_Of course not, _he berated himself. _His family will come looking for him soon and take him away from here. _

He felt the cool metal of his glasses brush against the palm of his hand and brought them up to his face. As his vision was restored, he spoke. "Thank you."

Brown eyes stared back at him, asking a thousand unspoken questions: _who are you? Why are you being kind to me? What do those words mean? _

_Might as well start at square one, _Fujitaka thought, shifting so he was sitting cross-legged in front of the boy. The officer had returned to his desk, but was watching them with a look of challenge in his eyes, as if daring Fujitaka to try and make the boy speak. _I could teach him the basics, at least, _he thought. _That might make it easier for the boy to find his parents._

He decided to start on the simple things. He pointed to his chest, making sure the child was watching. The one-eyed gaze never wavered. "Fujitaka," he said, drawing the word out.

The boy's eyebrows slanted down. No flicker of comprehension.

_Patience. Try it again. _He tapped his chest with his index finger and repeated his name. "Fujitaka."

The boy blinked.

He tried again several times, hoping for the boy to parrot the word back to him. After a while, it occurred to him that, in the long run, it would do the boy little good to remember the name of an unremarkable archeologist.

He pointed to the boy, hoping to elicit a name from him. The boy stood silent, his head tilting a few degrees to the side. The furrow in his brow deepened.

_Maybe something more tangible._ Fujitaka reached forward and held up a section of his cloak. The boy's hand snaked out to capture the edge of the garment, tugging it as if he was afraid to lose it. "Cloak," Fujitaka explained, holding the fabric up, then letting it drift harmlessly back into place.

"I already tried that," the officer behind the counter said. "If he can speak, he's incredibly shy."

"Even so, if I can teach him a few words, he might be able to understand some of what's going on."

The brief conversation removed the dip in the boy's eyebrows, making his face turn from intensity to pondering. Fujitaka could almost see the gears turning away in the child's brain as he tried to make the connection between language and communication. It was that look, so thoughtful and contemplative, that made Fujitaka think it was not a mental problem holding him back, but some missing detail that he'd never had cause to know.

He would teach the boy, he decided. Just until his parents showed up.

Fujitaka spent the better part of the next few hours naming different things in the police station. When two officers walked through the front door, returning from their daily patrols, they gave him quizzical looks and murmured in low voices about his peculiar interest in the child. Though they could probably guess from the subject matter that this was a lesson in the language of Clow, they didn't seem to understand his intent. _They've already written this boy off as mute, _Fujitaka thought. _But it doesn't matter. What's important is that he learns some way of communicating. And for that, he needs to understand this language. _

When dusk deepened to night, Fujitaka stood up and addressed the officer. The other man had been working on paperwork since his arrival, burying himself in his work once the lessons lost interest for him. "I'll be going now," Fujitaka said, bowing. "Thank you for taking care of the boy."

The other man shrugged. "Have to. Can't abandon him in the desert to die of dehydration."

The words struck him after his brief chat with Kentaro earlier today. _What if he _was_ abandoned? Who will take care of him when nobody shows up to claim him? _He'd seen the community center a few blocks away, but it had always seemed an ominous place to him, the kind of place where people went when they had nowhere else to go. _Would he go there, young as he is? Or would they eventually have to release him to the streets?_

Troubled, he did his best to smile at the boy before turning toward the door.

Like yesterday, he felt the tug of fabric by his knee and looked down. The child stared up at him with a gaze that was a thousand years old. Slowly, the boy removed the beige cloak and held it out to him.

Fujitaka stared back, startled by the fact that the boy had released the cloak for the first time since he'd donned it. For a moment, he couldn't move.

The boy shifted the cloak slightly, as if urging him to take it.

Fujitaka knelt down in front of the boy and took the cloak in his hands. The boy stepped back and wrapped his arms around his torso, like he was cold. Fujitaka spread the thick fabric out and waved it through the air to straighten it. Then, he rested it over the boy's shoulders and head, wrapping it around his torso. "You can keep this until your parents come to get you."

The boy drew the garment tighter around his frame, so it covered all his other clothes. Then he nodded—the clearest response Fujitaka had seen out of him yet.

He lifted one hand to tousle the boy's brown hair, then swept out of the station, ready to get back to his bed after a long day at the ruins.

* * *

><p>The man understood.<p>

As he cradled the cloak close to his chest, the boy contemplated that. It was as if the man had picked the thoughts right out of his mind. How could the man have known how much he'd wanted to learn the meanings behind those strange sounds if that wasn't the case?

He clutched the cloak to his chest. The man in blue had required him to remove it in exchange for a pair of soft pajamas, but allowed him to hold onto it while he slept. The soft slab the man had labeled as a "mattress" was too lumpy to provide much comfort. The boy relied on the cloak to soothe himself.

He didn't know what the man had said before he'd left, but he hoped it meant he was coming back.

* * *

><p>The man returned the following day, bearing gifts of fruit. This time, he spent some time making long strings of sounds, gesturing with his hands at every opportunity. The boy watched, learning more from the man's body language than the sounds themselves.<p>

There had to be some connection, he knew. Some critical difference between these thirty-syllable words and the simple words the man had connected to objects yesterday. But the boy couldn't figure out what.

* * *

><p>Four sunrises came and went, always followed by a long period of light, then a sunset, then a long period of darkness. Only two people interacted with him: the man who'd met him in the rain, and the man in the blue uniform.<p>

* * *

><p>Every day, just after the bright orange orb vanished from beyond the window(he could label it as a window, now that he'd learned the word for it) the man returned, bringing him extra food and making sounds. After the first few visits, the boy realized the sounds were much more complex than he'd initially thought. There were words for objects—many, many words, more than he could possibly absorb no matter how long he spent trying to remember them. This was made more difficult by the fact that some of the words were similar, but meant different things.<p>

He tried. The sounds bridged the gap between him and the man, though many of them were nonsensical to his ears. It became more difficult as concepts became more abstract. It took almost a quarter of an hour for him to connect the word "blink" with the action the man was making, instead of the body part he was using to make it. When he finally mimicked the action in understanding, the man's palms slapped together repeatedly, his lips twitching upward again.

Every night, though, the man would stand up, make a long string of sounds, then turn toward the door. Every night, the boy would grab the leg of his pants, hoping to stop him from leaving, or make the man take him away to other places. In response to this, the man's lips would curl down, and he'd shake his head(a gesture the boy somewhat understood, but which contained subtleties he couldn't yet identify). Usually, a few words would follow. But then the man would leave again.

One night, the boy resolved to follow him.

* * *

><p>The door clicked shut as the uniformed man retired for the night. The boy curled up on top of the mattress, using the cloak as a cushion for his head as well as a blanket. The rough, heavy fabric wasn't exactly <em>comfortable<em>, but the subtle, familiar smell relaxed him.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, he had a mission.

He waited for the shuffle of feet to subside in the other room. From the moment he'd come into existence, he'd had excellent hearing.

The officer moved around the other room, his footsteps mingling with the occasional rustle of papers. Sometimes, his shoes squeaked when he moved across the floor.

The boy waited. Listened. Watched. When the light peeking under the door went out, he crawled out of bed and draped the cloak around his shoulders. He walked, wincing as his shoes collided with the floor. After a few steps, he sat down on the tiled floor and removed the shoes. They'd be evidence of his escape, but if someone heard him now, it would all be for nothing.

He walked over to the door, resting his ear against the wood. When he heard nothing, he risked turning the knob. When that prompted no response, he slipped out into the front room.

A figure was slumped over in the chair, legs raised high and resting on the edge of the desk. The boy froze. What if they'd stationed someone here to make sure he didn't escape?

But the figure's only movement was the slight rise and fall of his chest. Alive but unconscious.

The boy moved on. There was a bell on door, attached to the top by a small thread. He stared at it a long moment, glancing back at the uniformed man. It was not the one who had grown familiar after days of bringing him meals, but one he knew vaguely from various encounters since he'd been brought here. The boy didn't know whether he slept soundly, or lightly.

He decided to take a risk, pushing the door open in such minute movements, a person's eye wouldn't have been able to track the shift in real time. As soon as it was open wide enough for him to get out, he slipped through, eyes trained on the bell as if it would spontaneously start ringing.

It didn't. As soon as the door closed behind him, he hurried into the silent bazaar, looking for the man.


	3. The Nursery

3. The Nursery

The boy plopped down on the ground and removed his shoes for the third time since he'd entered the bazaar. When he turned them over, a fountain of sand slid out.

He hadn't come into existence with shoes. On the third day of his stay in the police station, the man had brought this pair for him to wear. It had been . . . nice. Not in the same way the cloak had been, but still nice.

Once he'd emptied out his shoes, he started walking again. The bazaar was deserted, unlike the first time he'd traversed it. Did people not go outside at night? To him, night seemed so much more temperate. He'd been allowed outside several times since he'd been brought to the police station, but always when the sun was out, when it was too hot for him to do anything. The cool air was refreshing in a way the cold rain of his first moments hadn't been.

The boy felt a pang of unease. Perhaps it was unwise to be out here in the dark. Dangerous, even.

Spooked, the boy hurried through the silent marketplace, searching for shelter. With dozens of market stalls scattered all around him, it wasn't difficult to find a place to hide. His eyes scanned the area for a few seconds before falling across a shop laden with half-ripened fruit. Green bananas hung from a hook attached to the sign, just above a bowl of apples. From another hook dangled several round fruits the size of his head. He hurried over to that stall, ducking under the wooden countertop to find two cupboards, large enough to hold several boys his size. The first one was packed full, with some fruits he recognized and some he had no name for.

The boy wondered if this was where the man found the fruit he brought every day.

The second cupboard was a little more barren. He only had to shove aside a couple bowls of apples to make room for himself. After a cursory glance around to make sure no one was watching him, he slipped inside the cupboard and closed the door behind him.

There he waited, hoping nothing scary would find him. If the desert was so dangerous at night that people couldn't venture outside, that must've meant there were monsters lurking even in populated areas like this. It was better to just stay silent until the sun rose again.

He sat there, curled up, for several hours, peeking outside every few minutes to ascertain whether or not the sun had come up. The darkness outside only seemed to deepen, like a shadow spreading out to swallow up the city.

But terror could not pin him down forever. After the first few minutes, he calmed. After a few hours, he began to grow hungry again. With food so readily available, he decided to pick one of the apples from its bowl and snack on it. The juicy texture reminded him sharply of the first time he'd met the kind man, and he found himself clutching the apple core to his chest when he was done, right over the cloak.

For the first time, it occurred to him that he had no idea where to begin looking for the man. The police station had been their primary meeting place for so long, and the boy wasn't sure if he'd be able to find the spot where they'd met, now that it wasn't soaked with rain. He wasn't even sure he could find the police station again.

In the dark cupboard, the boy began to feel lost.

* * *

><p>Streaks of pink spread out across the sky like pale fingers.<p>

"You're here early, Fujitaka," Kentaro muttered. He was hunched over on one of the benches, clutching a cup of coffee in his hands as if it was the last rope tethering him to a life raft.

Fujitaka sat down beside the water trough and filled his canteen for the day. "Couldn't sleep," he admitted.

The younger man looked up, grinning. "Still worried about that boy you found?"

He removed his glasses, cleaning the layer of grit from them. In the desert, his spectacles accumulated a fine layer of dust within minutes. If he didn't clean the lenses, this layer thickened until he couldn't see out of his glasses at all. He'd developed a habit of wiping them off every few minutes. "I'm a little worried. A kid like that shouldn't be alone in the desert."

Kentaro murmured an assent, then went back to his coffee. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know. Keep visiting the police station, I suppose. At least until his parents come to pick him up." _Though that's seeming less and less likely, since they haven't come looking for him yet. _He sighed.

"Why don't you just adopt him or something?"

Fujitaka looked up. Put on his glasses. Realized he'd only wiped one of the lenses, then removed them again to correct the mistake. Put them back on.

_Adopt him? _he thought, staring at his colleague. Of course, it made sense. If the boy's parents didn't show up soon, he'd be transferred over to foster care until someone took him in. Even then, Fujitaka had heard plenty horror stories about what went on in foster homes.

If he allowed that to happen, was he condemning the boy to permanent misery? Unable to speak, with only the most basic of concepts mastered, the boy would be labeled a problem child, passed quickly from family to family without ever finding a permanent home. And what about when he grew up? Who would support him then?

_I could,_ Fujitaka thought. _If he'd even remember me by then. Or I could wait for the police to transfer him to the foster home and take him on as a long-term foster child. Maybe Kentaro's right. But I don't have the financial ability to care for him . . . _

"Fujitaka? Hey, Fujitaka, that was a joke."

He blinked, the voice pulling him from his reverie. Kentaro was staring at him as if he'd just grown a third eye.

"I was just joking, you know," the younger man said. "Even if you could get money from the government, you probably wouldn't even qualify to adopt."

He looked down. "Right. Of course not." He stood up, slinging his canteen over his shoulders so the plastic container rested against his hip. "I'm going to go see if I can make anything of the hieroglyphs we recorded the other day."

Kentaro sipped at his coffee. "Have fun decoding those. Our research team can't figure them out."

Fujitaka swept past the younger man, his new cloak billowing behind him as he walked. He'd finally bought a new one after his paycheck had come in, to replace the one he'd given the boy. _I don't regret it, _he thought fiercely. _It was worth it. _

He hurried down the stone steps, mind flitting back to Kentaro's careless suggestion. _"Why don't you just adopt him or something?" _

_Why not? _Fujitaka thought to himself._ Even if he can't speak, the boy understands what _I'm _saying. Isn't that enough? We could learn sign language. And even if I don't qualify to _adopt _him, I probably qualify to be a foster parent. At least as long as I'm here. _He frowned. Though dissecting every detail of these ruins could take years, it was unlikely he'd be here that long. Most likely, he'd be called away to investigate some other place once the major features of these ruins had been catalogued. That could take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on how many hidden chambers they discovered.

But then he would have to leave.

_The boy must learn how to communicate by then. That's the most important thing now. _

Fujitaka realized he'd passed the room he'd intended to study. He doubled back and entered the chamber, bending down to get through the tiny door. _It's like this room was built for a child, _he thought. As an archeologist, he had to acknowledge the possibility. Many ancient cultures had practices or structures that served little function in the modern world. Perhaps a room fit for children was one of them.

There was writing all across these walls, just as there was over most of the ruins. Fujitaka went to work copying them down, starting at the southernmost wall, where he'd left off yesterday. The tedious task of documenting each symbol allowed his mind to drift further from his research.

The boy always seemed so disappointed when he left, as if he feared he wouldn't return. As if he had no one else looking for him. _Is it possible he doesn't have parents? _Fujitaka wondered. He hadn't heard of any lethal accidents since coming to Clow, and he didn't think a lone boy could've survived more than a few weeks on the streets, even if people were generous with handouts. Those bandages had also seemed relatively fresh despite the storm, as if they'd been recently applied.

Was it possible there was no one looking for him? That he'd simply been abandoned?

Fujitaka realized he'd stopped copying down the hieroglyphs. Quickly, he looked up and finished the row, being careful to note every detail for later. Who knew what significance these symbols had to the people who had carved them into the stone?

The day progressed languidly, minutes stretching into hours. Most of the morning was spent recording these markings. The afternoon was devoted to examining the artifacts the excavation team had pulled from this room. Most of these had been dragged out to the larger chamber adjacent to this one, packed away in plastic bags and labeled as chamber C-14.

The other archeologists who'd been looking at the artifacts this morning cleared the room when he entered, all silent so their perceptions wouldn't color those of the other archeologists and limit possible conclusions. Discussion would come later, once everyone had formulated their own ideas on the artifacts.

Fujitaka started in a secluded corner of the room and picked up a plastic bag filled with half a dozen stone cubes. He donned a pair of gloves and pulled them out of their bag for closer examination. On each side was a different pattern. Two of the sides had triangles etched in them. Two sides had diamonds. Two sides had circles. Each shape differed in size from its companion, making them distinct. _Dice? _he wondered, recording his observations in his notebook. _Blocks? _

He moved onto the next bag. Kentaro caught up to him then, grinning broadly. "You find anything out about the writing on the walls?"

"Not much. It seems very similar to what we've seen on all the other walls."

"Ah. Well, at least the ancients were consistent." He studied the blocks for a moment, still smiling. "You know, these things look almost like children's toys."

Fujitaka pulled a conical piece of stone from the next bag and examined the etchings on it. Several pictures had been carved into the stone, the lines clumsy and uneven, as if the makers had sacrificed finesse for utility. He could see what appeared to be a stick figure holding something vaguely circular. Other lines crisscrossed the length of the cone. From the base rose a small knob, just large enough for him to grip between his fingers.

"Children's toys, huh?" he murmured, lost in thought. After a moment, he set the cone on the pedestal in front of him, point down. With a twirl of his fingers, he sent it spinning over the stone slab. _It's balanced like a top. _"Did this come from the room I've been studying?" he wondered aloud, checking the hand-drawn map in the front of his notebook.

"Yeah. The one with the tiny door," Kentaro told him.

_Children's toys. A tiny door. Most likely a nursery of some sort._ He frowned, mind flashing back to the conversation this morning. _If the universe is trying to tell me something, it's not being very subtle._

"You done with that?" Kentaro asked, eyeing the top as it stopped spinning.

"Yeah. Go ahead." _Maybe I should bring something to entertain the boy today. He's probably bored after days of being stuck in one place._

"You okay?" Kentaro asked, serious for once. "You look . . . troubled."

Fujitaka frowned. "Do you think . . . I'd be a good parent?"

The younger man snorted. "Obviously. You're the most responsible person I know."

He opened the next bag. This one was a bit harder to figure out. A collection of stone slabs, all uniformly shaped, but thin, easily stackable. Each had a different symbol carved on each side. _Flash cards, maybe? That would make sense, in a child's room. _He turned the cards over, looking at each of the symbols. After spending hours looking at the writing on the walls, these markings seemed deceptively simple, as if they were just fragments of the hieroglyphs he'd been copying down. _Like an alphabet, _he thought, focusing. "Hey, look at this. Don't these look familiar?"

His colleague peered at the simple markings, eyebrows slanting down in concentration. "They look a little like the markings we've been studying, but simpler."

Fujitaka nodded. "That's what I thought, too. Do you think this is their alphabet?"

"A phonetic alphabet? And they have thousands of different symbols on these walls?"

"There are modern languages that have both phonetic and picture-based alphabets," Fujitaka reminded the younger man. "And if there's any similarity between them, maybe that will help decode some of what we've seen."

Kentaro nodded seriously. "Should we call a meeting?"

He nodded. "Just a small one. A few of our colleagues. Just to see if they think it's significant, too."

"I'll get Takeshi and Oruha. Where should we meet?"

"Right out front. Half an hour from now."

Kentaro almost hit the doorframe on his way to find the others. Fujitaka turned back to his work, recording each symbol on a fresh sheet on notebook paper and drawing comparisons to those he'd sketched out before. He'd need solid evidence to show his colleagues if he wanted to be taken seriously. By the time half an hour had passed, he had half a page of similarities written out. He hurried up to the main level, then through the massive gap in the side of the ruins that everyone used as a doorway.

Oruha and Takeshi were waiting for him outside, each wearing woven hats that shielded them from the desert sun. Oruha had hair black curls tied back in a thick ponytail, and was busy sketching something in her notebook. Takeshi sat on the bench beside the water trough, fidgeting. A moment later, Kentaro came up behind him and darted over to join the group.

"So, it sounds like you found something," Oruha said, tucking her pencil behind her ear.

Fujitaka nodded and launched into a summary of what he'd discovered, disclosing his hypothesis that chamber C-14 was a nursery, as well as that the civilization that had created this structure had used two different alphabets.

"There's evidence to support that," Oruha said after a quick examination of his comparisons. "Suzuran thought the same thing, about that room being a nursery. The hieroglyphics, though . . . Those are going to take more work."

Fujitaka nodded, excited at the thought of a new task. He'd been copying down the same unknown symbols for over a week now. Being able to compare them to this new set of symbols would enliven his work, if Oruha let him take charge of it. "These are just things I drew up in the half hour before we assembled. I'm sure I can find more, try to connect some meaning to the letters. And if they're phonetic, we might even be able to learn something of _how _the language was spoken."

"I'll put you in charge of matching them up," Oruha said. "If you can get me a thousand examples of similarities by tomorrow morning, I'll consider the two related, and we can work from there."

"Tomorrow morning?" he echoed.

"Naturally. Our time here is finite. The sooner we uncover something interesting, the more grants we'll get, and the longer we can examine these ruins. Tomorrow morning, or not at all."

_I'll be up all night doing this, _he thought, heart sinking. _But if I don't, she'll put someone else in charge of this. No, I have to power through it. _"I'll have them by tomorrow, then."

"Good." She stood up and headed back toward the ruins. "Go home and finish those. I'll see you at sunrise."

"Of course." He bowed, then folded up his notebook, taking a long drink from his canteen. _I won't have time to visit the boy tonight, _he thought, wondering what his sudden absence would do to the child. Would it break the tenuous connection they had? Would the child feel abandoned? _Not exactly setting a good precedent if you're planning to take care of him, are you? _he thought to himself, hurrying back to the clay house he'd occupied for the duration of his stay. As he passed through the Clow Bazaar, he thought about his earlier intentions to bring the boy something to play with during the day.

_No time now, _he thought miserably, bypassing the marketplace. Within minutes, he arrived at the tiny house the excavation team had rented. He started a pot of coffee, then settled down at his desk for what he was sure was going to be a very long night.

* * *

><p>The flood of light roused the boy from his sleep just as surely as a bucket of ice water. His eye flashed open, his legs shooting out automatically to defend himself from the surge of light. The basket of apples he'd been sitting next to all night turned over as his elbow hit it, and a dozen round fruits spilled out into the sand.<p>

Shouts reached his ears, louder than any string of words he'd heard thus far. He rocked back in the cupboards, trying to regain his bearings.

_Monsters, _he thought, fearing something had found his hiding place. Something warm coiled around his ankle, dragging him out onto the hot sand. He opened his mouth, a loud squeal exploding from his lips. His throat ached with the first vocalization he'd ever made.

The shouting continued, and he writhed as whatever had gotten hold of his foot hoisted him upside-down into the air. Amidst the cacophony, he caught the words "fruit" and "thief."

Suddenly, the pressure around his ankle vanished, and he fell. Sand filled his mouth as his face plowed into the ground. A sharp pain lanced through the spot on his face covered by bandages, and he spent the next few seconds trying to sit up. Meanwhile, the shouting went on. He turned up to see who was yelling, dazed from the impact.

The man's broad shoulders blocked out the sun, the shade obscuring his features. The boy could only make out the distinctive slant of the man's eyebrows before the man's fingers wrapped around his upper arm.

The boy let out another squeal. It was an instinctive sound, unlike those fluid syllables produced by the man who'd found him in the rain. The boy was only semi-aware that the sound came from him, barely cognizant of anything besides the immediate threat. He ripped his arm free of the tall man's grasp and sprinted several meters before coming to a sudden stop.

_The cloak, _he thought, only able to summon up the word because it was one of the most important possessions he owned. He hesitated, his feet sinking into the sand. The man towered over him, a low rumble of unfamiliar words spilling free of his lips. Beside the market stall, the boy saw the cloak lying in the sand, abandoned.

Without thinking, he ran back to retrieve it. His short legs carried him across the sand faster than ever before, adrenaline pushing him forward even as instinct commanded him to flee. But he needed that cloak—how would the man know who he was if he didn't have it?

He darted between the tall man's legs, swooping down to snatch the heavy cloak from the ground. As he felt the rough folds between his fingers, the tall man's hand snatched the back of his pajamas and pulled him back.

There was a moment where the boy wondered what he'd done to make the man so furious. And then he felt the leather whip scrape across his back, and the only thing he could think about was the pain.


	4. The Importance of a Word

_Author's Notes:  
><em>

_Hey guys, just a general announcement regarding my Tsubasa fics. I'll be updating "Hated" every other day instead of every day, because I'm no longer as insane as I was a couple months ago. I'll do my best to update the rest of my Tsubasa fics weekly, including "Reversal of Fate," which I've neglected. And I have a couple more chapters planned out for this fic, which I will hopefully finish within the next two weeks or so. Thank you to everyone who has read or reviewed, and I apologize for the long time between updates._

* * *

><p>4. The Importance of a Word<p>

His scream tore through the bazaar. Adults stared at the growing confrontation, setting their wares on the shelves. The boy heard shouts of alarm and anger, along with other emotions he had no name for. All the while, he twisted in the air, clutching the cloak as if it offered some relief from the pain.

He felt something sticky and wet slide down his back, under his torn pajamas. He whimpered softly.

"Drop him!" a female voice shouted. The boy was surprised to hear two words he knew in such quick succession.

The man holding him up hollered back a retort. A moment later, he felt the whip carve another deep gash between his shoulder blades. The resulting scream was weak and thin, his throat aching after the shrieks it had already produced. Liquid flooded his eyes, blurring his vision. The sudden sensory deprivation left him reeling, and his struggles redoubled, clumsier than before.

More shouts. A figure approached and thrust its arms out to push the heavyset man. The shove sent the man tumbling backwards, and the meaty hand that had been locked onto the boy's pajamas released him at last.

The boy fled, sprinting across the sand with shoes full of grit. More liquid burned in his eyes, his throat constricting painfully. His back stung wherever open air touched it.

_It hurts . . . _he thought, tripping over someone's purse and toppling forward. Sobbing, he crawled across the sand. People parted ways for him, some with silence, others with exclamations of surprise. He ignored it all and plowed through the streets. Even this early, the bazaar overflowed with tight-packed bodies, leaving no room to move. It was all he could do to crawl under people's feet in his attempt to escape.

_Hurts . . . _He broke through the last pack of people and staggered forward. The clear liquid was running down his cheeks now, but he could see clearly again. His legs carried him to a shaded spot next to a building, where he collapsed, still whimpering.

The sticky fluid continued to seep into his pajamas.

He lied there for several minutes, catching his breath. Everything had happened in seconds. Only now, alone in the shade, did he have an opportunity to sort through what the events.

_What did I do? _he wondered, though his grasp of the language wasn't so complete that the words organized themselves in his head as such. Rather, the thought was mostly panicked curiosity, linked to the actions of the man he'd encountered a few minutes ago. Tall and wide as he'd been, his anger was terrifying to behold.

But what had triggered it? Had he done something wrong? Was it bad enough to merit the bleeding marks on his back? _I did something bad, _he thought. _That means I'm bad._

This awakened a new pain in him, somewhere between his lungs. He was _bad_. He didn't deserve kind things like the cloak in his arms, or the gentle voice of the man who'd given it to him. He curled up into a tight ball in the sand, lifting the cloak to his face to stifle the strange sounds building there. He didn't _want _to be bad.

_Can I change that? _he wondered suddenly. _Can I be good instead?_

His breathing stabilized at the thought. Maybe there was a way. The kind man had been teaching him the names of things for several days now. Maybe he could use that to his advantage.

_What did he want me to do, though? _He frowned, just as he'd seen the man do numerous times since their first encounter. The mimicry gave him an idea. _Maybe he wants me to say the sounds back to him. I should practice._

He opened his mouth and tried to reproduce the sounds the kind man had been offering him all week. What came out was a garbled string of nonsense. His eyebrows slanted downward in concentration, and he tried again, with similar results.

_Why can't I talk? _he wondered. _Maybe if I tried only one word at a time. _

After a moment, he decided on the word "apple." It was simple enough, and also useful. But when he tried to make his lips form the sounds, he couldn't even get the consonants out. Several attempts yielded the same result: failure. He couldn't even understand the word, and he'd been the one to say it.

_Maybe I can't do it, _he thought, heart squeezing painfully. _Maybe I'll never be able to speak._

He curled up into a tighter ball, drawing his legs in and wrapping his arms around him. The physical pain mingled with his repeated failures, wearing him down faster than the stifling heat of the desert.

Under the midmorning sky, he fell into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

><p>By the time Fujitaka finished the comparisons Oruha had ordered him to do, the sunrise had stretched its pink fingertips into the sky.<p>

He stared out his window, vision blurring. When he stood, his joints cracked. His eyes found the notebook page again after a minute, and he looked down, wondering through the haze of fatigue what he was supposed to be doing. _Better get ready for work, _he thought, lifting his glasses off his face to wipe the lenses. Even when he put them back on, his vision improved little. The whole house seemed hazy, as if the outlines of the objects had turned to crumbling sand.

He put his notebook in his bag, not wanting to forget it after spending all night writing in it, then unwrapped the bread on the countertop so he could make breakfast.

It took him a while to work through his morning routine. By the time he reached the ruins, most of the other archeologists were inside. He caught sight of Oruha's bushy ponytail. "I finished the comparisons you wanted me to write."

She took the notebook, but didn't examine it. "Jeez, Fujitaka, you look like crap."

He wiped his glasses again. "They're all there. I've got about fifteen pages of similarities."

Oruha flipped through the notebook, pausing on each page for several moments before moving to the next. Her expression grew more intense the longer she examined them. "Excellent work, Fujitaka. I'm going to hand this off to the other archeologists. Go back home and get some sleep. You need it." Without another word, Oruha flitted off to question their colleagues.

Fujitaka slung his bag over his shoulder and headed back toward the house. His attention flitted away from him like a moth from the heat of a lantern flame. He was almost surprised when he made it back to the tiny house, as if he'd merely happened upon it.

He stepped through the heavy curtain and laid his bag on the countertop, kicking off his shoes. He collapsed on top of the single bed, barely cognizant enough to remove his glasses before he fell asleep.

In his dream, he was in the Clow Bazaar. But instead of the usual daytime crowd, the stalls were all empty, the sandy paths devoid of all life. A grave silence pressed down on him, only broken by intermittent howls of wind from the desert beyond.

Fujitaka wandered, unnerved by the empty stalls. Dust covered every surface. As if the whole city had been abandoned.

The dream shifted, the bazaar suddenly breaking off to reveal the wing-shaped ruins he'd spent weeks studying. Shadows pooled in the edges of the wings, thrown into relief by a sliver of moonlight. A single figure stood in front of the ruins, facing away from him. Fujitaka stepped forward, instinctively recognizing the rippling fabric of his old cloak. _What is the boy doing all the way out here?_ he wondered, hurrying over to the short figure.

His hand reached out to get the boy's attention. When Fujitaka touched the fabric, though, the cloak collapsed, sand pouring out from the sides. He shot forward, just in time to see the figure crumble, features losing all semblance of humanity. His pulse pounded in his ears: _bum, bum, bum . . . Bum, bum, bum . . ._

Someone was knocking.

Fujitaka surfaced from his dreams, turning over in his bed before realizing he hadn't even changed his clothes. His visitor knocked again, more insistently.

He reached over to the end table, fumbling for his glasses. He cleared the grit off the lenses with his thumb, sitting up.

When the knocking didn't cease, he called out to his visitor. "Just a minute, please!"

The knocking paused long enough for Fujitaka to hear the blood pulsing through his ears. _That dream was too real, _he thought, shuddering. He ran a hand through his brown hair and walked over to the entrance, squinting when he saw the light slanting in through the window. Still morning.

He pushed the entryway curtain aside, lifting a hand to block the flood of light. A steady pulsing had developed in his temples. "Yes?" he asked, trying to guess who his visitor was based on their silhouette.

"You're Fujitaka-san?"

He nodded, not recognizing the voice.

"The one who brought that boy into the police station a few days ago?"

He lowered his hand, forcing his eyes to adjust to the desert sun. The man before him wore the same blue uniform as the man in charge of the police station. A gold pin on his shoulder declared his status as the city sheriff. "That's me," Fujitaka said. "Did his parents come pick him up?"

Something like surprise flitted across the black-haired man's face. "Quite the opposite. He's missing."

This brought Fujitaka out of his stupor. "Missing? Since when?"

A female voice cut in, and Fujitaka noticed a second figure standing behind the officer. "He was gone when we switched shifts this morning. It's possible he's been gone since late last night."

Fujitaka blinked. _That long? And no one saw? _"There must be some way to find him."

"Sir," the woman said, holding up a sheet of paper. "We apologize for the inconvenience, but you're the closest contact the boy has. We have a warrant to search your house."

He stared at the woman for a long moment, disbelief warring with concern in his mind. The woman's face remained composed, as if this was a perfectly normal command.

_They think _I _kidnapped the boy, _Fujitaka thought, stunned. He stepped aside, eyes dropping to the floor. "Go ahead," he murmured, numb. "He's not here."

The officers invaded his house, sweeping through the combined kitchen and living room with pragmatic efficiency. Fujitaka stood in the doorway, watching them tear through his things as if they belonged to someone else.

_Missing. The boy is missing, and they're wasting their time here. _Briefly, he wondered how many resources had been devoted to tracking down useless leads like this. _The boy is only seven or eight. He has no idea where he's going, no idea where I live. I'm almost a mile from the station. I need to go find him._

The black-haired man turned his bag over, spilling his papers everywhere. Fujitaka winced. _I just organized those last week, _he thought. The man flipped through his pages of notes. When he was done, he dropped the tattered notebook onto the table from a foot up, letting the pages flutter helplessly. _Those are my notes from the pyramids, too._ "Excuse me, but I thought you were looking for the boy. Why are you rifling through my notes?"

The officer threw him a disparaging look. "It's protocol. If you've hidden the boy away in some underground bunker, we have to know about it."

"I haven't."

"Well, we'll find out, won't we?"

Fujitaka seldom felt anger. The closest he'd come in recent memory had been the disapproval he'd felt at the boy's parents for possibly abandoning him. But he could feel the fury bubbling up inside him now, merging with his frustration. "May I suggest an alternate course of action?"

The man scoffed, paging through a photo album, but the woman turned to him. "Yes?"

"The boy doesn't know his way around the city. He's probably no more than half a mile from the police station, wherever he went. I'd suggest sending officers to comb the surrounding areas—the bazaar, perhaps."

The woman glanced up at her partner, pursing her lips. "He's got a point." The other officer looked over at her, exhaling sharply. "Finish searching this house, and we can get to it."

The woman turned back to her work, peering in every cupboard to make sure the boy wasn't hiding. Fujitaka leaned against the wall, letting out a breath and telling himself to calm down.

The officers rifled through his desk, then his bedroom, then the bathroom. Fujitaka stood silent through all of it, waiting until they assessed his harmlessness before speaking. "May I leave?"

"Go ahead," the woman said. "We're done here."

Fujitaka stepped outside, throwing his cloak over his shoulders so the sand wouldn't get caught in his clothes. He headed downtown, hoping to find the boy himself, since no one else knew where to look.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Fujitaka wondered if anyone would find the boy before he died of dehydration.

* * *

><p>A bird flapped its wings near his face.<p>

The boy opened his eyes, startled by the sound. The pigeon cocked its head to the side, then took to the air, rising about five feet before coming down a few meters away from him. An iridescent feather drifted down and landed next to his hand.

His back ached furiously, the dry blood making his clothes cling tight to his skin. He tugged on the fabric, wincing when he felt it pull free of the half-healed scabs.

Much better.

The sun had risen high in the sky while he'd been napping. He got to his feet and started walking again, staying where the shadows of buildings provided some shelter from the sun. Even then, the heat coming off the sand made the air shimmer with a heat mirage.

He walked, stopped, then started forward again. All the while, he tried to reproduce the sounds the kind man had been making all week. But no matter how hard he tried, all the words came out in a jumbled mass of syllables. _No good, _he thought, slipping between two buildings and coming out the other side. As he stepped out onto the main paths, he was greeted by a rush of activity. Unlike last night, the city was overflowing with people. Everywhere he looked, people chatted amongst themselves, their words passing with such speed and fluidity, the boy had no hope of understanding.

Even so, he listened, watching the ways their mouths moved. He watched the tug and pull of their jaw, the shapes of their lips when they made certain sounds. Some of the shifts seemed common between everyone he saw.

Was that how they were able to speak? By shaping their mouths certain ways.

Eyebrows knitting together, the boy tried again. This time, he was able to get more clarity out of the sound. The noise he made sounded almost like a word.

For a while, he just stood there, eavesdropping on every conversation that passed through his ears. Every so often, he'd recognize a word, sometimes even two or three at a time. What surprised him was how reliant these people seemed to be on such conversation. They exchanged information, responding to handfuls of words with exclamations of surprise or dismay. One person haggled over a loaf of bread, his voice rising when the old woman guarding it shook her head. Another woman knelt down beside an animal the kind man had labeled as a "cat," and started speaking to it.

The boy entertained the thought that the cat might understand the words, but in mid-conversation, the animal's tail twitched, and it flounced away. The woman who'd spoken to it moved on, grinning to herself.

He plopped down on the sand. His legs weren't _sore_, exactly. The oppressive heat reduced his energy, and he couldn't find much motivation to walk for extended periods. Even in the shade, the heat sapped his strength. He began to wonder how people could possibly survive here—and why anyone would want to.

For hours, he listened to the myriad of conversations. He picked up on words the kind man simply hadn't been able to teach him with the materials they'd had.

"Father, look at the camels!" one boy shouted, tugging on an older man's tunic.

The boy looked over. Despite the wide gap in the pair's ages, their features were similar, both having light blond hair and pale skin. As if the two were . . . _What? _he wondered, watching them closely.

Was there some name for their connection? Their matching features indicated some relation. The boy struggled to find a word that would describe their similarity.

"Father," the other boy went on, still tugging at the man's tunic. "Aren't they amazing? I've never seen them up close before."

The blond man knelt down, smiling at the boy who'd called him "Father."

He recalled the man who'd given him the cloak doing the same thing whenever he spoke. Getting down to his level. _What is this? _he wondered, as the man murmured something to the child. The boy responded with enthusiasm. "You mean it, Father? You really mean that?"

The boy's lips framed the word without a conscious thought, his throat constricting a little bit as the sounds traveled through it. "Fa . . . ther . . ."

That was it. That was how it was done. The boy felt a rush of excitement, and repeated the word to himself several times, trying to get a feel for the syllables. His lips tingled after the first few repetitions, unused to the strain.

His excitement dimmed when he realized the kind man wouldn't hear his words, if he didn't find him soon. And that wouldn't happen if he just sat on the side of the street like this.

The boy stood and started walking, restless despite the stifling heat. This time, he wandered for almost an hour before something caught his interest.

It was a smell, like that of the bread the kind man had brought, and it saturated the air. As the boy turned the corner, he caught sight of a dark green awning, stretched out beside a glass door. People entered the shop with empty hands and came out with paper bags full of what he could only assume to be pastries. But more alluring than the scent of bread was the sheer familiarity of this place.

This was where the man had found him.

* * *

><p>Fujitaka knew the statistics. Children who disappeared were seldom seen again, and those who were tended to return within forty-eight hours. Taking into account the arid desert and the fact that the child had no way of communicating, the odds of recovering the boy drained away with every minute he wasn't found.<p>

But Fujitaka persisted. If the boy could be found, he'd find him.

His search started at the southeast corner of the bazaar and spread out from there. If there was any place for a boy so young to hide, it should've been amidst those stalls. And if the boy was simply wandering, surely someone would've noticed him.

"Excuse me," he said to a dark-skinned woman. Already, he'd spoken to a dozen different vendors, hoping one might point him in the right direction.

"Would you like to buy some beads?" she asked, turning to greet him.

"Actually, I'm looking for a lost child."

A shadow fell across the woman's face. "What's he look like?"

"He's about seven or eight, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He'll be wearing a cloak like this one." He gestured to the garment he wore, glad he'd thought to take it with him.

Recognition flashed across the woman's face. "Ah, yes."

"You've seen him?"

She nodded. "Early this morning. One of the other merchants caught him stealing fruit and chased him off."

_Stealing? _Fujitaka's eyebrows shot into his hairline. Another part of his mind reasoned through it. _Of course. He doesn't know any better. _"Can you tell me which way he went?"

The woman pointed toward one of the side streets. "He wandered off that way. But that was hours ago. Is he your son, or something?"

Fujitaka blinked. "No. No, nothing like that."

The woman cocked her head to the side in surprise. "Oh. Well, good luck finding him, anyway."

He bowed. "Thank you for your help."

"Hey, Mister," the woman said. He turned back to her. "Maybe you should get the police on this, or something."

"They're already involved." _Unfortunately._ He turned away and headed across the bazaar, praying the boy would have enough sense to stay in one place, wherever he was.

The side streets weren't as crowded as the bazaar, but the buildings ruined any hopes of a good vantage point. He hurried down different alleys, scanning the sands, then rubbing the grit from his glasses.

This part of the city was mostly unfamiliar to him. He'd only come here a handful of times since they'd started excavating the ruins. Oruha had taken him here once for coffee, and he'd wandered here once or twice more on those days when his workload was light. The palace stood just a few streets away, its jagged towers shooting higher into the sky than any other building. Overall, this place had a more festive edge than the bazaar.

Fujitaka crossed the street, peering down alleys as he went. Stray cats dominated these narrow passages, well-fed by tourists. _Sure, they'll feed the cats, but no one goes up to a boy sitting in the rain . . ._

He stopped, his mind freezing on the thought. "The rain," he murmured to himself. Something built up in his chest, like the precursor to some big revelation. _That's right. The first time I saw him, he was sitting out in the rain near the bakery. _

People walked around him, like a river branching around a small island. Fujitaka groaned. "I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out," he murmured, breaking into a run. People flinched away as he barreled through the streets, some with cries of shock. _Of course he'd want to go somewhere familiar. And if not the police station or the bazaar, it has to be there. _

He crossed another street, cutting diagonally across the road to avoid several camels. As he stepped onto the edge of the street, a discolored patch of sand caught his eye. His head whipped around, eyes scanning the area.

A single, dark-brown eye stared back at him.

"There you are," he whispered, running over to pick the brown-haired boy up. The child leaned into his arms, exhaling softly. "I've been looking everywhere for you," Fujitaka told him, not expecting a response.

The boy's arms tightened around his neck. "Sorry, Father."


	5. Communication

5. Communication

Fujitaka clung to the boy, frozen. _He can speak, _he thought numbly, staring at the clay wall of the bakery. The boy held onto him, pressing his face into Fujitaka's shoulder.

Another jolt went through him as he realized _what _the boy had said. _He called me "Father." But how? I've never taught him that word. Unless he picked it up while he was missing. _Fujitaka blinked, remembering his purpose here. _I have to take him back to the police. They're still looking for him._

He picked the boy up, readjusting his arms to get a better hold. As he did so, he felt the split edges of the boy's pajamas, the rough texture of the stiffened cloth. He turned the boy around, examining the shredded cloth. Dry blood stuck to the torn fibers, making them stiff. "What happened to you?" he whispered.

The boy said nothing, just shied away from his touch as if the scabs still pained him. Fujitaka stared at the damage, wondering what could've caused such distinct marks.

"Let's get you back to the station," he murmured, not sure where else to go. He covered the boy with the cloak and hurried toward the police station. _They'll have medical supplies there, won't they? And something for him to drink._

He carried the boy across the bazaar, pushing through crowds of people. When he finally made it to the station, all the officers in the building looked over.

"Where was he?" a female officer asked, plucking the boy from his hands.

"Near the bakery," Fujitaka said. "And he's hurt. He needs medical attention right away."

The woman pulled the cloak out of the way. A quiet gasp sailed through her teeth, and her hands moved to the scabs. At her touch, the boy squirmed out of her arms and jumped down to the floor. His hands shot out, fingers curling around the fabric of Fujitaka's pants. The archeologist glanced down in surprise.

The other officers crowded around them, watching the boy with wary eyes, as if he was liable to lash out at them.

"Looks like someone took a whip to his back," one of the men said, stepping back. To another officer, he said, "Run and get some bandages. We can treat him here."

Fujitaka sighed in relief, kneeling down beside the boy. The child crawled into his lap, leaning against his chest. "Can we get him something to drink?" he asked. A moment later, one of the officers appeared with a glass of water.

The next hours passed sluggishly. The police argued and tried to figure out how the boy had escaped. Fujitaka considered telling them about the boy's first words. _It could be important, _he thought. _If I don't tell them, and they find out, I'll have nothing to say to defend myself. _

Eventually, though, he decided it would be their little secret. Next time the boy spoke, he'd act surprised.

The most strenuous part of the afternoon occurred when they tried to treat the boy's wounds. Doing so required them to apply a stinging antiseptic solution to the scabs. The boy squirmed away, clawing at anyone who came too close. Eventually, Fujitaka had to hold the boy tight to his body while the officers took turns dabbing at his wounds with soaked cotton balls.

Not once during this did the boy make a sound. It was as if he didn't know how to cry.

_Maybe he doesn't, _Fujitaka thought. _Or he doesn't know that he should._

After the boy's wounds had been wrapped, the police assaulted Fujitaka with a myriad of questions about where he'd found the boy, if he'd seen anyone suspicious, if he'd actually witnessed the boy being abused . . . After forty-five minutes of questioning, the police were forced to conclude that the boy had simply wandered off and gotten into some trouble along the way.

Just as the sunlight started fading from the sky, the chatter died down. Officers who'd been called in to comb the streets went home. Those still on the clock went about their business, some leaving to apprehend petty criminals, others staying in the building to do paperwork.

Fujitaka stayed, sitting down against the wall and holding the bandaged boy in his arms. Any other day, he would've occupied himself with teaching the boy the language. But he figured they'd passed enough milestones for a while.

After a time, he nodded off, exhausted from the compounded stress of his all-nighter and the search for the boy. The child had already been asleep for hours.

He woke to a gentle prodding on his shoulder. "Station's closing for the night. No more visitors."

He peered up at the speaker through his sand-caked glasses. He recognized her as the woman who'd searched his house this morning.

Slowly, he stood, being careful not to jostle the sleeping boy. "Can I put him to bed first?"

The woman frowned, her brown eyes drifting down to the boy's face. "Sure."

She led him to the back room, where an old mattress had been laid out on the floor._ No wonder he wanted to leave, _Fujitaka thought, eyes roving the grey walls. _This place is dismal._

He set the boy on the mattress and pulled the cloak over him, so he wouldn't get cold. After that, he rested one hand on the boy's forehead, pushing his hair back.

"He's really gotten attached to you, hasn't he?"

Fujitaka shrugged. "I suppose."

It was quiet for a moment. He stood.

The woman spoke, keeping her voice low. "You know, if his parents don't come for him soon, he'll have to go into foster care."

Fujitaka said nothing.

"Look, I'm not saying you should take him in or anything, but maybe you could visit him at the foster home once in a while."

"I'm not a permanent resident of this country. I'm just here until we finish excavating the ruins."

The woman looked down at the boy, frowning. "Oh. Well, I guess there's no help for it."

Fujitaka looked once more at the sleeping child, a pang of guilt shooting through him. _But it's different now. He can speak, a little bit. He'll be able to talk in sentences soon as long as someone's teaching him. And besides, it's not like I can just quit my job when the other archeologists decide to move on. _

He allowed the dark-skinned woman to lead him to the door, then headed home. All the way there, the woman's words echoed in his ears.

* * *

><p>"You're here early, Fujitaka."<p>

He glanced up from the symbols he'd copied from the walls. "Ah. Good morning, Oruha."

"I got a team together to research the writing system. You're in charge of them."

"Oh?" He turned to look at the list in her hands. "Who have I got?"

"Kentaro and Takeshi, of course. Plus Rickart and Erii. You have them for the rest of the day, to get organized, plus three hours every afternoon this week to compare notes."

He bowed. "Thank you."

She shrugged. "You made the connection. Besides, I don't want this headache for myself."

"Of course." _That's right, she prefers studying burial rites and ancient religions. _"Do you know where my team is?"

"Kentaro's in the nursery room. The rest aren't here yet."

"Thanks." He hurried into the ruins, taking the stairs two at a time. The more time he got with his team today, the more smoothly things would run for the rest of the week, and the sooner he'd get done with work so he could visit the boy. _Maybe I shouldn't, _he thought suddenly, slowing. _The police assumed the boy was with me when he went missing. Perhaps I've denied him the opportunity to socialize with others by spending so much time around him._

He frowned, ducking down to pass through the nursery door. Kentaro stood on the other side of the room, copying down the images etched into the wall. He looked up when Fujitaka entered. "Morning."

"Good morning. Did Oruha tell you you're on my research team for the next week?"

"Yeah." Kentaro dug through his bags, holding his sketches between his elbow and his ribs. After a moment, he pulled a fresh notebook from his bag. "I was wondering if you'd let me do the phonetic part of it, with Erii. Since she's our resident expert on dead languages, I mean. That's the only reason."

Fujitaka arched one eyebrow, fighting a smile. "Honestly, Kentaro, sometimes I wish I could be young like you."

"You _are _young. You're only five years older than I am."

Fujitaka shook his head. "Thank you, but that's not what I meant. You're young in spirit."

"Yeah, yeah, and you're more responsible." Kentaro made a dismissive gesture, plopping down in one of the folding chairs they'd brought for the excavation. He flipped through his notes. "It's strange, though. Even though you're more mature, you've got this weird, childlike curiosity, as if you think every new experience is going to be a good one."

"Most of the time, that's true."

"Maybe. But you . . . I don't know. You _get _it, more than anyone else."

"Get what?"

Kentaro made an exasperated noise, rolling his eyes. "Everything except that phrase, evidently."

Fujitaka smiled. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Kentaro stared at his notes for a second, his expression turning solemn. "Your whole worldview is different from everyone else's. You never question what's right and wrong. You never doubt your own assertions, yet you're happy when people come up with better ideas. You're blunt and honest, but somehow you manage to be nice. You're just . . . different."

He shrugged. "All part of this profession, I suppose. I haven't been everywhere, but I've seen enough to know that there can be no judgment when you enter a new culture—not if you want to learn something from them. Everything must be approached with an open mind."

The younger researcher smiled at him. "See? That was blunt, but not mean. I don't know how you do it."

He shrugged. Just then, he heard footsteps echoing around in the stairwell. "It sounds like the rest of our team is here. Shall we get started?"

Kentaro grinned. "Might as well get something done."

Fujitaka spent a few minutes organizing his notes as the others arrived. Once everyone was together, he split his team into two groups, with Erii and Kentaro working on the phonetic alphabet, and Rickart and Takeshi working with him on the more complex symbols. He set up a schedule for them to compare notes, dividing up tasks. Within minutes, everyone was working on their respective duties.

The day passed quickly, now that he had a goal to work toward. Running between both stations meant he was able to see the progress of his charges. _Everyone is working hard to make sense of this language, _he thought. _And if I don't keep up, it's going to fall apart. _

Eventually, though, they had to break for lunch. Fujitaka hurried to the upper level to indulge in one of the sandwiches Oruha had ordered for the excavation team, hoping to use at least part of his lunch hour to get ahead on his work. Kentaro sat down beside him, accustomed to following him around whenever Takeshi was busy. "Hey, Fujitaka," the archeologist said, his voice strangely subdued.

"Did you make any headway on the alphabet?"

"Some," the younger man said, his voice brightening for a moment. "But that's not what I was going to say."

"Oh. Well, go on."

Kentaro glanced around, as if scanning the area for eavesdroppers. Fujitaka bit into his sandwich, relishing the taste after an hour of enduring an empty stomach. After a moment, the young archeologist spoke. "I heard about what happened yesterday."

"Yesterday . . ."

"How that kid wandered off, and you had to go looking for him."

"Oh. What about it?"

"It's just . . . I know I said something before, about how impractical it would be for you to adopt him, but . . . He seems to matter a lot to you."

Fujitaka shrugged. "He does, but . . ." _But I can't support him on my salary. I can barely feed myself. _"I don't even know his name."

"Because he won't talk?"

"That's the thing," he said, lowering his sandwich to his lap. "I heard him speak for the first time when I found him yesterday. I didn't even know he _could _speak. And it was so . . . _amazing_. You wouldn't know, but . . . I think I might be the only person he's ever spoken to. He only spoke the one time, when I picked him up—no one else was around. And what he said . . ." He trailed off, stricken by the memory.

"What did he say?"

His sandwich lay forgotten in his lap. "He called me 'Father.' I never even _taught _him that word. He could've only picked it up while he was wandering around. But even so, what would compel him to—" He bit his lip, not sure how to classify the significance of the title.

"Maybe he doesn't have a father of his own."

"What?"

Kentaro shrugged. "Absent dad, parental abandonment. It happens all the time. Heck, maybe his parents were killed, and the trauma left him unable to speak for a while. I've heard bad experiences can do that to a little kid. Or amnesia. That happens, too."

Fujitaka stared at his colleague. Kentaro took a deep drink from his canteen, his expression distant. After a long moment, the younger man spoke. "If he doesn't have a name, you should give him one."

"But . . . Isn't that—"

"It doesn't have to be a permanent name. Just something more specific to him than 'the boy.' I don't know. See what he likes. Give him a name he'll answer to. At least assign him a color or something—the way you refer to him now is confusing."

Fujitaka sputtered out a laugh. "A color, Kentaro? Really?"

"No, not really. But he needs a name. It's something he can take with him wherever he goes."

Fujitaka looked down at his sandwich. _A name? _he thought, bringing the bread to his mouth. Before he bit into it, he said, "What right do I have to decide something so important for him, when I probably won't see him again after we leave this country?"

Kentaro rolled his eyes. "Jeez, Fujitaka, if I knew this was going to turn into a philosophical debate, I wouldn't have brought it up."

He forced a smile. "Sorry."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Oruha rounding up her personal team. He swallowed the last bites of his sandwich, despite the growing lump in his throat.

By the time they made it back to the ancient nursery, where they'd been working all day, everyone else from his team had arrived. Kentaro ran to Erii's side, hovering over her notes like a schoolteacher.

Fujitaka smiled, shaking his head.

The afternoon wore on, moving sluggishly as he tried to fend off thoughts about the boy. From the moment Kentaro had brought it up, he hadn't even considered his responsibility to the excavation team. _I should have, _he thought. _I have a duty to fulfill here, and if I allow myself to get distracted, it will only strain my colleagues more. But even so . . . _His eyes slid over to Kentaro as he chuckled at something Erii had said. _There's more to life than one's career. As long as I don't dwell too much on it while I'm _here_, I can still teach the boy. _

"Fujitaka, what do you suppose this symbol stands for?" Rickart asked, holding up a tile with one of the more complicated patterns on it. Fujitaka looked over, surprised to realize it was the same symbol he'd contemplated last week—the symbol with the wings.

Rickart was going on. "I think it might stand for enlightenment, given that we've found it somewhere in every room."

"Very possible," he said, examining the symbol in a new light. _To build ruins shaped like wings . . . What sort of concept would drive the ancients to create such a thing? _Is _it supposed to be a path to enlightenment, or do the wings represent something more worldly? And if so, what? _"It must've been important. The wing motif is repeated all over these ruins."

Rickart took the piece back, scrutinizing it with renewed intensity.

_Enlightenment, huh? Wouldn't that be nice? _He sighed, checking his watch. It was almost dusk. "All right, everybody. We've done enough for today. I'll meet up with all of you tomorrow afternoon."

There was a general mutter of relief as the room cleared. Fujitaka gathered his bags, closing his notebook and tucking it into the largest pocket. He was about to leave when the pile of blocks Erii and Kentaro had been working with caught his eye. The symbols were lined up in neat rows, with similarities evident between each of them. Fujitaka suspected they'd been working on a theory that the most similar characters had similar sounds.

Almost unconsciously, his thoughts went to the boy. _Since he seems to understand at least some of the spoken language, maybe it's time to teach him the alphabet._

He blinked, then wiped the grit off his glasses. He was about to dismiss the idea—he'd hardly gotten the boy talking—when it occurred to him how useful it would be to teach the child a writing system. Something for the boy to study while he was busy at the ruins. _That could accelerate his progress exponentially._

He headed up to the ground level, refilling his canteen before he left. He headed back to the police station, wondering if they were keeping a closer watch on the boy after the latest disaster.

The boy was waiting for him.

"Welcome back," he said softly, looking up at him as if for approval. Fujitaka felt his lips stretch into a wide smile. He knelt down in front of the boy and rested a hand on his head.

"Have you been waiting for me all day?"

A new voice cut in as the boy processed the question. "He's been talking about you ever since this morning. It's like he just woke up knowing how to speak."

Fujitaka raised his eyes to the female officer who'd allowed him to tuck the boy in last night. "Really?" he said, feigning ignorance.

"Well, sort of. He doesn't have a complete grasp of the language, but he knows words. For some reason, he kept asking for apples."

A faint smile crossed his face. He pulled the boy into his arms. "I'm surprised he knew my name to ask about me."

"Oh, _your _name's not the problem. I just wish he would tell us his."

Fujitaka blinked, stunned to realize that the police knew no more about the boy than he did, even though the child had apparently been talking all day.

"We were hoping you'd be able to coax it out of him. Whenever _we_ ask, he looks at us like he doesn't understand."

"Well, he's new to the language. It might take some time."

The woman frowned, eyebrows pulling together. "Will you try, at least? So we can put out a more detailed poster?"

"Sure." He plucked the boy from his arms and sat him down on the floor in front of him. "Can you tell me your name, little one?"

The boy cocked his head to the side, lips parting slightly. After a moment, he shook his head.

"Guess he really doesn't understand," one of the officers murmured.

"Okay, let's try something else," Fujitaka said, both for their benefit and the boy's.

He lifted one hand to his chest. "Fujitaka," he said, enunciating every syllable.

The boy lifted his tiny hand, resting it over Fujitaka's fingertips. After a moment, his lips framed the syllables. "Fuji . . . taka."

Fujitaka nodded once in approval, hoping the concept would transfer over as he tapped the boy's sternum.

Something like confusion settled across the boy's features. He shook his head.

Fujitaka tried again, this time speaking in full sentences, in case the boy had picked up enough of the language to understand the other words. "My name is Fujitaka," he said, tapping his chest. He reached forward and tapped the center of the boy's shirt. "What's your name?"

The confusion vanished, replaced with a look of intense concentration. The boy's breathing came faster, as if he'd just dashed across the bazaar. His eyebrows knit together, forming a single line across his brow. But it wasn't until Fujitaka saw the nascent tears budding in the corners of his eyes that he recognized the distress in that face. "What's wrong?"

The boy looked up at him with a heartbroken expression. "I don't have a name."


	6. What it Means to Disappear

6. What it Means to Disappear

_He doesn't have a name? _

The boy looked at him, shoulders tensed as if expecting a rebuke. Fujitaka stared back, stunned. "You don't . . . have a _name_?"

Liquid pooled in the corners of the boy's visible eye. His lips parted slightly. Instead of crying, though, he looked down at his feet. "Sorry."

The word was layered with such shame and defeat that Fujitaka pulled the boy into his arms without thinking about it. The boy stiffened for a moment, then relaxed.

The female officer watched the exchange, her brown eyes going wide. "Wait, what does he mean by that?"

Fujitaka ran his hand through the boy's hair. "I don't know," he admitted. "I guess it means someone needs to name him."

"But—he _must_ have a name."

"He probably did. But he's forgotten it along with everything else."

"Wait," said another officer. "We don't know that yet. Maybe if you ask him what happened before you found him, we'll figure something out."

The boy squirmed free of Fujitaka's embrace and turned to the police officer. "I didn't exist," the boy said.

The room fell silent.

All at once, everyone started yelling.

"How can that be—"

"He _must _have amnesia—"

"God, this is a nightmare . . ."

"What's wrong with him?"

The boy retreated, flinching away from the sudden spike in conversation. His expression went from unaffected to uncertain, and his teeth buried themselves in his lower lip. "Everybody calm down—" Fujitaka began, holding up a hand. The chatter continued, heedless.

The boy made a soft sound at the back of his throat.

It was strange how the whole room went quiet, despite the whine being almost inaudible beneath the shouting. Everyone turned the boy, the frustration falling from their faces like broken masks. Several of them took a step forward, responding to whatever they saw on the boy's face before he doubled back into Fujitaka's arms.

"I think that's enough questions for today," Fujitaka said. The boy sniffled into his shoulder, hiding his face from everyone else. _Like a wolf pup fleeing into its den, _he thought. "In any case, someone needs to name him."

This triggered another round of half-spun arguments, but unlike the first time, these passed after only a few seconds. "What are we going to call him?" asked the female officer.

_I don't know, _Fujitaka thought. "Let's watch him tonight and see if we think of anything interesting."

The boy's sniffles ceased. With a jolt, Fujitaka realized he'd never seen the boy cry before. _He develops faster than any child I've ever seen, _Fujitaka thought as the boy wiped his eyes. _Both m__entally and emotionally. _He ran a hand through the child's dark hair. "How about we learn some new words today?"

The boy nodded hesitantly. Fujitaka pulled his notebook from his bag and tore out a clean page. "I thought it might be good for you to learn the alphabet, so you can start reading soon." He wrote several simple letters on the page, large enough to display every feature of the character. "These are the first five letters of Clow Country's alphabet. Each letter has its own sound." He pointed to the first letter and made the accompanying noise. The boy parroted it back to him. He repeated the process for the next letter, then the one after that, until he reached the end of the series. When he asked the boy to recite the syllables, the officers started clearing out of the room, returning to their daily business.

Once the boy was able to mimic the syllables, Fujitaka gave him a pencil and coached him through the writing process. For the first few minutes, the boy busied himself with the mechanics of holding a pencil. _It's so strange, _Fujitaka thought. _That he's advancing so rapidly in a few areas while having so little grasp of the others._

Even after he got used to holding the pencil, the boy managed only to reproduce the most basic features of the letters. After a while, a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows, expressing his frustration.

"You can work on copying these down while I'm gone tomorrow," Fujitaka told him, slipping the pencil out of the boy's grasp. He looked down at his empty hand, frowning.

Evening darkened to night. Even then, Fujitaka had no idea what to call the nameless boy. "We'll think of a good name," he assured the boy.

"How about 'Syaoran'?"

Fujitaka glanced up to see the female officer standing in the doorway, watching their progress. It was the same woman who'd allowed him to tuck the boy in last night, who'd enlisted his help in trying to discover the boy's name.

"It means 'small wolf,'" the woman explained. "In my country, children aren't named until their third year. Such a name would be given to a child who was expected to face adversity, so they might find strength in themselves."

He looked down at the boy, thinking of just how much adversity he'd already faced. In less than two weeks, he'd endured hunger and thirst, healed from wounds he didn't remember receiving, learned bits and pieces of a language previously unknown to him. All that, he'd faced without complaint, without even an understanding of how much he'd struggled. _Truly like a wolf pup coming into the world. _

"Syaoran, huh?" he murmured. The boy didn't respond to the word—Fujitaka suspected he didn't understand half of what the woman had explained, despite his quick understanding of more common words. He knelt down in front of the boy. "What do you think of that?

Confusion clouded the child's eyes. Fujitaka tapped him on the chest, just as he'd done when trying to ascertain his real name. "Syaoran."

The boy lifted a hand to his chest, right where Fujitaka had touched him. His lips parted slightly. His left eye—the other was still covered in bandages, like it had been when he'd first come here—rose to look at Fujitaka. After a moment, he repeated the name in a soft voice. "Syao . . . ran."

Fujitaka smiled. "That's right."

Syaoran stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Fujitaka's neck. "Tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll see you tomorrow."

The boy hugged him tighter, then stepped back.

Fujitaka turned to the female officer. "Will you make sure he practices writing those letters after he wakes up?"

She nodded. "Sure." He smiled once more at both of them, then started for home.

* * *

><p>It took Syaoran a long time to fall asleep that night.<p>

He'd thought no gift could possibly measure up to the cloak Fujitaka had given him that day in the rain. But now he'd been given something of even greater value, something that couldn't be taken from him.

_I have a name, _he thought, rolling over on the lumpy mattress. _I have a name, so I must really exist._

He hadn't even been aware of that concern until the moment he'd been freed from it. He hadn't realized how much he'd feared fading away until the name had grounded him to this world. It was as if the name was a cord, tethering him to this world, a permanent link to the man who'd already given him so much.

Trying to follow the man out into the desert city had been unwise. But if there was anything he could do about it, Syaoran would find a way to stay with him.

* * *

><p>They settled into an easy rhythm over the next few days.<p>

Every day, while Fujitaka was busy at the ruins, Syaoran practiced the letters he'd been taught the night before, copying them down on reams of paper until his hand cramped. When Fujitaka checked in every evening, he'd display his best copy, hoping for a positive reaction. No matter how clumsily he wrote the letters, Fujitaka would always smile and applaud.

Each day, he learned five letters and their sounds. When no new letters came on the seventh day, Fujitaka reviewed everything he'd learned, asking him to pronounce certain letters in rapid succession. These sounds, he claimed, were the beginnings of written words.

Syaoran struggled to recall the growing list of vocabulary he'd acquired, trying to memorize the flavor of each syllable, the sculpted lines of the letters.

On the tenth day, one of the men with the blue uniforms interrupted their session to speak with Fujitaka in private. The kind man's eyebrows slanted downward. "Well, all right. Syaoran, you stay right here."

The boy knew enough of the words to understand the command, though he couldn't see why the two had to speak privately.

Syaoran looked down to the paper he'd been using to practice his letters and set to work stringing them together. Today, the man had been trying to teach him how to write his name phonetically. He'd gotten the first four letters down, but after that, he started to forget what the word was supposed to look like. Dismay crept in without having the man here to help him. _I can't do this, _he thought. _I don't understand. But I don't want him to be disappointed, so I have to._

He gnawed his lip, looking back to the sheet Fujitaka had written on. From there, he looked over the letters he knew and wrote in what he thought was the right combination for the end of his name. By the time he finished, the man was on his way back.

Syaoran detected the shift in his demeanor right away. The man's movements were stiff, and he walked faster than usual. When he sat down, the air pushed forward by his approach stirred the papers they'd been working on.

"I wrote my name," Syaoran said, holding up the paper. The man blinked and refocused, plucking the paper from his hands to examine it. He returned it a moment later, pointing to one of the letters.

"This should be an 'A,' not an 'O.'"

Syaoran deflated and picked up a pencil to make the correction. When he did, he offered the paper to the man again.

"That's good," Fujitaka said quietly, still not smiling. If words could've been tinged with colors, these would've been a pale, ashy gray.

"What's wrong?" Syaoran asked, setting his pencil down. Something like surprise flashed across the man's face.

"It's nothing."

"Did I do something bad?"

The man blinked. "No, no. It's not your fault."

"Then what's wrong?"

Fujitaka sighed, burying his hands in his hair. "Sometimes things happen that are out of our control, and we just have to deal with them."

Syaoran looked at him for a long moment, at a loss. To watch something spiral out of control with no way to stop it . . . That was scary. _It's like I was before I had a name, _he thought, remembering the dismal fear that he didn't really exist, that he could vanish like a puff of vapor. "Did someone disappear?" he asked quietly.

Fujitaka stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"Well . . ." He struggled for words he wasn't sure he knew. He found himself making hand gestures, like the man sometimes did to illustrate a point. "Did someone . . . disappear?" He made a gesture like he was scattering sand to the wind.

The man's expression changed to fascination. "You mean die?"

Syaoran blinked at the unfamiliar word. "No, I mean disappeared."

Fujitaka arched an eyebrow. "You mean like someone _left_?"

He shook his head. "No. Like someone was there, and then they weren't. Like they turned to sand."

There was a silence. Then Fujitaka lifted a hand to his mouth to stifle the strange hiccupping sounds building there. It didn't help; his lips curled up at the corners as he doubled over, clutching his side.

"What's wrong?" he asked warily.

"Syaoran, people don't just vanish."

"How do you know?"

"Because—" He broke off, his laughter silenced. The man blinked several times, staring at him. "My god, you're serious."

Syaoran's throat grew raw, as if someone had scrubbed it out with steel wool. His vision blurred. "What if _I _disappear? What happens then?"

The man pulled him into his arms. Syaoran pressed his face into the his shoulder, as if that could hide him from whatever forces caused people to vanish.

"You won't disappear," the man whispered, running a hand down his back. Syaoran buried his face in the man's cloak, wishing he could believe he was more than a wisp of fog in a windswept world, wishing he could retain the permanence his name had given him.

"Do you promise?" he asked.

"I promise. I won't let you disappear."

Syaoran relaxed, feeling as if someone had been squeezing the air out of his lungs and finally let go.

"I have to leave for the night," the man said after a while. These words, at least, he recognized. He wrapped his arms around the man's torso and squeezed, as if he had the strength to hold the man here. The embrace broke when the man pulled away. "I'll see you again tomorrow."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

It wasn't until the next day that Syaoran realized promises could be broken.


	7. Where Chaos Reigns

7. Where Chaos Reigns

"We're going to find a new place for you to stay," the dark-skinned woman said, grinning.

Syaoran looked up warily, draping his cloak over his head like a hood. "I don't want to go."

"Sorry, but it's time to register you with Clow's orphanage so you can live there."

"I don't want to go," he repeated, feeling as if the ground beneath him had turned to wind.

The woman's lips curved up at the sides, a strange response to his refusal. All the smiles he'd seen before had contained genuine happiness, or at least that was how he'd perceived them, once he'd realized what the facial quirk meant. But this smile seemed . . . sad, somehow. The contrasting shades of emotion set him ill at ease—if someone could hide pain behind an expression of joy, what else could be hidden from his eye?

"You'll be just fine," the woman said, scooping him up in her arms. He flinched, eyelid squeezing shut. "I've met the people working at the orphanage. They're nice."

His eyelid slid open again. "Nice?"

The woman started walking, hoisting him over her shoulder so he couldn't see her face. Feeling empty, he stared at the familiar clay walls of the police station until they disappeared beyond the door.

The sun pressed down on them, a vengeful furnace in the sky. Combined with the woman's body heat and the warmth of the cloak, the temperature swiftly went from irritating to intolerable. When he tried to wriggle away from the woman, she held him tighter to her body. "None of _that_. We're almost there."

He fidgeted, unable to trust the words when the air around him was so sweltering.

"You would be cooler if you'd let me take that cloak," the woman said.

"_No_."

The woman sighed. "I don't suppose Fujitaka taught you about heatstroke, huh."

The word was unfamiliar, but Syaoran understood the rest of the sentence. Even as part of him recoiled from the thought of learning from someone besides Fujitaka, curiosity commanded him to ask, "What's it mean?"

The woman smiled, her voice cheerful. "It means that if you stand out in the sun too long, you just fall over and die."

Syaoran shuddered and pulled the hood of the cloak over his head, shielding himself from the deadly sunlight.

"Don't you worry about a thing," she said. "That won't happen to you. I promise."

He looked at her, distrust blooming in his stomach. When Fujitaka had promised something, he'd always followed through. He'd always reappeared, day after day. There was no such precedent for this woman, and given that she was taking him from the building he'd grown so accustomed to since coming into existence, he refused to give her claims as much weight.

A shadow fell over them, cooling the air. Syaoran dared to peek out of his cloak. Above them, a green and yellow awning shielded them from the glaring light, rippling in the stifling breeze. The dark-skinned woman freed him from her embrace, setting him down on the cement porch. She knocked twice on the door, then walked in without waiting for an answer.

A flurry of activity bombarded him as he entered. For several seconds, all he could do was stare at the scene unfolding before him.

Each wall was painted a different hue—all the primary colors plus green. Tiny handprints marked the sheetrock, sometimes overlapping, sometimes standing alone. Cheery music twisted through the air, a foreign chorus to his still-inexperienced ears, and while the melody was pleasant, the volume made his head throb. Other children, many of them younger than him, ran around, playing with wooden blocks and smearing paint on shiny paper with their hands. Three boys were clustered around a series of linked boxes, connected by bits of plastic and fit to a half-finished track. In the corner, a girl with yellow hair cried, snot dripping from one of her nostrils. A welt on her forehead indicated some kind of trauma. When a red-haired woman finally stooped down to pick her up, the girl's sobs doubled in volume.

Syaoran lifted his hands to his ears and closed his eyes, trying to block out the cacophony. Muffled voices rose above the rest. He recognized the voice of the dark-skinned woman. "Hey, I called you earlier, about the missing boy we found."

Another voice pierced the air, feminine and unfamiliar. "Excellent. We can talk in here. I'll get Talt to take over for me." The woman, still holding the sobbing girl, gestured to a door on the opposite side of the room. Like a good portion of the walls, it was plastered with papers, many of which appeared to be smeared with paint.

"Thanks," the dark-skinned woman said. Her hand snaked out, prying Syaoran's hand from his ears. "This way, Little Wolf."

He obeyed, hoping the next room would be less chaotic than this one. As they crossed the bustling play area, the girl standing next to the shiny canvas glanced over and waved at them, her hand crusted with crimson paint.

The room beyond the door was the antithesis to the room through which he'd entered. A desk dominated the far wall, neat stacks of white and yellow paper arranged in a line across the side of the desk. A metal filing cabinet stood off to the side, taller than any adult he'd met so far and flanked by a stool that allowed access to the top drawer. Several chairs were lined up in front of the desk, and one more facing them from the other side.

"We've just got some paperwork to fill out," the dark-skinned woman said, taking his hand and leading him to the chairs. He took a seat. His legs dangled over the edge, his tiptoes only brushing the ground only when he stretched his legs. _This world isn't built for people my size, _he thought, trying to get comfortable on the wooden seat.

A few minutes later, the red-haired woman who'd tended to the crying girl appeared at the door. "Sorry it took so long. One of Talt's charges had a diaper emergency."

"It's no problem."

The stranger took a seat on the opposite side of the desk and started sliding sheets of paper across the surface. "This is mostly legal stuff," she said. "Custody forms, adoption versus foster care, and the like. You can just skim through that while I talk to our newest addition."

The dark-skinned woman nodded, already scanning each of the documents. The redhead leaned forward, pushing her glasses back so they didn't appear so skewed. "Hello there, little boy."

He said nothing.

"He doesn't talk much. Like I said over the phone, his vocabulary is pretty limited."

The woman's ponytail bobbed as she nodded. "Of course. So, I'm told you like to be called 'Syaoran.' Is that right?"

He shrugged.

"Well, you can call me Macy. Can you talk to me a little bit? What do you remember of the time before that man found you in the rain?"

"Nothing. I didn't exist."

Her eyebrows climbed, almost disappearing into her bangs. "You didn't _exist_? Well, that's a very . . . _creative _way of expressing your memory loss."

He fidgeted—he didn't understand half the words at the end of her sentence.

Macy leaned forward and pressed a finger to the bindings around the right half of his face. "Do you remember anything about losing your eye?"

He blinked slowly. "I . . . I only had one eye when I came into existence." He wasn't even sure if that was accurate. He'd been _bandaged _ever since he'd come into existence, and though most of the bindings had been removed, the one over the right half of his face had only been removed so the officers could clean the skin underneath.

"But you must've lost it somehow. Are you sure you don't remember who did this to you?"

He shook his head.

"He says he doesn't remember anything before he woke up in the rain," the dark-skinned woman chipped in. "And he hasn't really contradicted himself yet, so I think he's telling the truth. But that's up to your psychologists now, I guess."

Macy's lip quirked to the side. "Yes, well . . . He certainly is a _unique _case, isn't he?"

The dark-skinned woman leaned forward, setting the papers in her lap. "You think he'll be hard to place?"

"As it stands now, yes. But he may get lucky, or he might recover from his trauma enough to be reclassified. The world is full of possibilities for children this young." She folded her hands, lacing her fingers, and leaned forward, scrutinizing him through her spectacles. "We're going to find you some good, adoptive parents, and everything will work out just fine."

"Why do I need parents?"

Macy's eyelids fluttered. "Well, to take care of you, of course."

"People already take care of me," he said, hand rising unconsciously to touch his cloak.

"Yes, but I mean in a more permanent sort of way. You'll be safe and secure, and you'll always have someone to go to if you ever need help."

He frowned, wishing she would just believe him. Fujitaka would take care of him—he had ever since they'd met. Fujitaka wouldn't turn him away if he asked for help. What use were _parents _when he already had someone looking out for him?

Yet the bespectacled woman resisted every argument that came to his lips, and after a few more minutes of questioning, he lapsed into silence.

"Is this all I have to fill out?" the dark-skinned woman finally asked, paging through the documents.

"That's all. Just sign here, and he'll be under our care."

"No!" he yelped. "I can't stay, I have to go back to the station, or he won't be able to find me."

"Who won't be able to find you?"

"Fujitaka," he said. Honestly, this woman had no idea what she was doing.

Macy raised an eyebrow. "And who is this . . . Fujitaka?"

"He's the one who first found Syaoran. He's been teaching the boy the language."

"Oh." The redhead frowned, a finger going to her lower lip as her eyebrows came together. "Well, we have speech therapists that can help him with that here."

"I need to see him," Syaoran said. His voice broke.

Macy ignored him, turning instead to the officer. "We have to keep him under observation for a few days before we allow any outsiders to visit, to make sure he's emotionally stable."

"I know." She leaned forward and pressed the tip of her pen to the paper. Wherever she applied pressure, ink flowed out of the pen.

With nothing more than a scribble, the woman signed his existence away.

"Thank you," Macy said, pulling the papers toward her and glancing over them. "I think that should be just fine."

"So we're done here?"

She nodded, her glasses slipping half an inch down her nose. Absently, she pushed them back into place. "Don't worry. We'll take good care of him."

The dark-skinned woman stood up and patted Syaoran's shoulder. "Don't worry. I'm sure Fujitaka will visit soon to teach you all about Clow."

Hope flared in his chest, hotter than the deadly sun outside. _That's right, _Syaoran thought. _He _promised _he'd see me today. _

The dark-skinned woman abandoned the room. Macy knelt in front of him and took his hands. "How about we find you someplace to sleep?"

He wasn't sure why she phrased it as a question when it was obvious he had no choice. He hopped down from the oversized chair, pulling his hands from hers. Her eyebrows climbed toward her bangs again, but all she did was open the door and walk him out.

Syaoran endured the chaos of the colorful room as the woman explained what it was. She spoke simply, using words he mostly understood, yet he couldn't help but feel belittled, somehow. Surely she wouldn't speak to a _normal _child this way. If he ever hoped to have command of the language here, he'd have to listen to more mature conversations.

"This is the nursery. The little kids play here _all day_. You'll like it here a lot."

His nose twitched. "It's too noisy."

"Lots of kids are playing here," the woman said, reiterating her earlier point. "It's always loud."

He frowned and allowed her to lead him across the bustling room. She pointed out various attractions, including the easel—still in use, blue paint now splattered over the ghastly crimson he'd seen before—and the linked, plastic boxes, which the woman labeled as a "train." She pointed to every child in the room and gave him their names, claiming he would grow to like them. Already, Syaoran was struggling to process the severity of his new situation. This place was all wrong—the colors were too bright, the contrasts too sharp. A steady throbbing in his head reminded him of the rain drumming against the windows, the first night he'd stayed in the police station.

He'd left only an hour ago, and already, the distance seemed insurmountable.

"Let's head upstairs and find you a room," the woman said, taking his hand. Obstinately, he yanked his fingers away and drew his cloak tighter around his shoulders. With a sigh, the woman tapped the back of his shoulder and prodded him forward.

Syaoran quickly realized the stairs were going to be his new nemesis. They loomed above him, a forbidding mountain with uniform angles and sharp edges. A tattered rug clung to the wooden steps, a gaudy red strip that stood in stark contrast to the pale blue walls.

"Come on, dear." Macy nudged him toward the steps. He shied away.

"It's too high."

"Don't be silly. Even the little kids can climb these stairs."

He bristled—most of the children he'd seen had looked younger than him, and the thought of them scaling these steps left him reeling. How could they manage such a feat?

Moreover, how was he supposed to climb them when the edges of the steps blurred together like this? He could hardly tell how distant they were, and even now, the steps seemed to shift, unstable.

"Come on," Macy said, tugging him closer to his nemesis. "I'm not going to carry you up the steps—I'll throw my back out trying."

He jerked his hand away and started forward, refusing to acknowledge her apparent confidence. When his shins bumped into the closest step, he tumbled forward and hit his head on the edge of the third. The impact sent a spark of pain through his face, right where the bandage was wrapped.

"Oh my!"

He ignored the woman's cry of surprise and pulled himself onto the next step. It was slow progress. He couldn't judge the distance between each step, so he had to climb the stairs with both hands and feet on the floor. The woman came to his side, ascending the obstacle with sinuous grace. He studied the way she moved, but couldn't replicate it without risking a nasty fall.

He was out of breath by the time he reached the top. The woman took his hand and pulled him away from the edge of the stairs. "Oh my, you've scuffed up your knees. We'll have to put a bandage on that."

He shook his head. "I'm fine."

She sighed, losing her omnipresent smile. "There are rooms this way."

Syaoran allowed her to lead him to a hallway lined with doors. Some had whiteboards attached to the outside, some bearing pictures and some bearing words he didn't know. Frustration bubbled up inside him. Fujitaka could've taught him all those words. He could've been free to sculpt whole worlds out of printed letters. Now, all he could do was search in vain for meaning in the symbols. What good was a phonetic alphabet when his vocabulary was still so crippled?

They came to a stop at the end of the corridor. Macy stepped in front of him and turned the brass knob of the door, peering inside before holding it open. "Go on in."

He slipped through the gap and found himself in a small room. Unlike the rest of the orphanage, the walls were subtly colored—beige with brown trim. Two empty beds, both covered with white sheets, sat on the opposite side of the room.

"We have an odd number of boys now that you're here, so you'll be rooming alone until something opens up. Bed check is at nine every night, and you can't leave your room after that."

He fidgeted. This place was more like a prison than the barred cells he'd explored at the police station.

"There are clothes in the dresser. When it's time for lunch, there'll be a bell. Make sure to come down right away, otherwise you won't be able to eat. Um, what else?" She glanced around, as if something in the barren room would spark her memory. After a moment, her face lit up. "Oh, the bathrooms are just down the hall. You . . . You know how to use those, right?"

The insinuation, like everything else about this place, irked him. "Of _course _I do," he said, as if none of the police officers had been forced to show him to the bathroom the first time he'd . . . slipped up.

Besides, walking to the bathroom was much less uncomfortable than the alternative.

"All right, well, I'll just leave you here so you can get used to things." Macy smiled again, too cheerful, and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Syaoran walked over to the window and flung the curtains open, standing in the sun for a few minutes before he remembered the sunlight could kill him. He closed the curtains and crawled into bed.

* * *

><p>He left his room only a few times that day. At lunch, he kept to himself, watching the chaos unfold between the other children. Sometimes, he could feel their gazes crawling across the bandages on his face, but whenever he looked at them, their heads would turn away, their shoulders bunching up as if to shield them from his gaze.<p>

Lunch passed. He faced the brutal obstacle presented by the stairs and sequestered himself in his room. When dinner came, he made no move to go downstairs.

Fujitaka never came.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Notes:<em>

_I know. It's been forever. I'm sorry, but I didn't expect this fic to be this long, and I wasn't sure how to get where I was going, so it was delayed._

_My reasoning on Syaoran's hatred of stairs is thus: with only one eye, he has no depth perception. Therefore, it's difficult for him to judge the distance from the stairs, and they seem a lot more forbidding than they really are._

_Also, I don't know much about orphanages or adoption, so if I write something blatantly incorrect/illogical, just point it out and I'll correct it._


	8. Lost and Found

8. Lost and Found

"What happened to your eye?"

Syaoran looked up from the waffles on his tray. Sitting across from him, leaning forward to get a closer look at the bandages plastered to his face, was the yellow-haired girl he'd seen when he'd been brought to this orphanage. All he could remember about her was that she'd been crying over something when he'd walked in—the sheer chaos of the play room prevented any other impressions from sticking in his mind.

The girl wasn't crying now, though. In fact, she looked curious. He set his fork in a puddle of syrup on the side of his plate. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

He shook his head.

The girl frowned. "That's weird."

He returned his attention to his tray, stabbing one of the waffles with his syrup-drenched fork. It was his third day here. After he'd skipped dinner the first night, Macy had started making sure he attended his meals. Her apparent concern irked him. Couldn't she see that he didn't want to be around these people? Couldn't she see how they looked at him?

At this very moment, his red-headed caretaker watched over him like a bird of prey, a frown dawning on a face more given to smiling.

"You really don't know what happened to your eye?" the yellow-haired girl asked, still sitting across from him.

"No."

"Have you always had only one eye?"

He shrugged. "As long as I remember."

The girl smiled. "I once saw a man with only one arm. I didn't get to talk to him, though."

Syaoran looked up again. As soon as he did, he realized the girl was still staring at the patch of bandages over the right side of his face. His stomach stirred with unease under her piercing gaze. He hurried to finish his breakfast, then stood up, bringing his tray over to the counter where it would be washed. His vision blurred, his left eye stinging slightly. A dull pain sprouted in his throat. By the time he reached the stairwell, he was running.

"Syaoran, hold on," someone called. He stumbled up the first step, bashing his knee on the edge as he fled. Delicate fingers wrapped around his upper arm, holding him back. Half-afraid and half-frustrated, he tried to yank free, but the hand held fast. "Syaoran, what's wrong?"

Finally, he turned and opened his eyes. His red-headed caretaker, Macy, was staring down at him, her glasses askew.

Suddenly, it was too much: the three days he'd spent here, Macy's patronizing tone, not seeing Fujitaka. His tears overflowed and he started yelling. "I hate it here! I want to go back where he can find me! I can't stay, I can't—" A sob burst through his teeth, interrupting his tantrum. He wrenched free of Macy's hold and pressed his hands to his eye to wipe away the tears there. "I want to see Fujitaka . . ."

Macy sat on the step, right beside him. "I'm sorry," she said, and all the patronizing simplicity of her words disappeared in favor of the mature tone he was used to hearing around the police station. "Our rules require each child to go through an adjustment period before they're allowed to see anyone from the outside. In most cases, it's only about three days, but for you . . . Until we can get a clearer evaluation from the psychologist, we can't really say when it'll be all right for you to see anyone. You've experienced extensive memory loss."

He shook his head. _She doesn't understand. I haven't lost my memories, I never had them._ He curled up where he sat, folding his arms so they sat on his knees. "It hurts to not be around him. It hurts here." He lifted his hand to his chest, feeling the faint pulse of his heart under his skin. Even now, it felt as if it was rending itself apart, deprived of meaningful human contact.

"You miss him."

Syaoran nodded. "Can't I see him?"

The redhead sighed, lifting a finger to her nose to straighten her glasses. The gesture reminded him of how Fujitaka always cleaned his lenses of sand. "I don't know. I can ask."

He arched an eyebrow. "Ask? Aren't you in charge?"

A faint smile graced Macy's lips. "No, far from it. I'm only in charge of watching you kids."

Syaoran frowned. As far as he knew, that was all the adults in the place _did_. So, if she was in charge of watching over the children, why couldn't she change the rules and let Fujitaka visit?

_Unless he doesn't want to visit. _The thought intruded on his storm of emotion, silencing his mind. _What if she's lying? What if he hasn't come because he's forgotten about me, or he doesn't care? _Nascent tears budded in his eyes. _No, that can't be true. He wouldn't have spent all that time teaching me if he didn't care._

_Would he?_

Syaoran stood. "I'm going to my room," he mumbled, crawling up the menacing staircase on his hands and knees.

"Do you want me to talk to the psychologist and see if they can make an exception?"

The twin trails of moisture were growing cold on his face. Oddly, despite having one eye out of commission, he still produced tears from both tear ducts. That might've fascinated him if he hadn't been so emotionally drained. "I don't care anymore," he said, just loud enough for Macy to hear. "I just want to leave this place."

He trudged to his room, closed the door behind him, and buried his face in his pillow to stifle the sobs building in his throat.

* * *

><p>Fujitaka sat at his desk, perched over his notebook, wiping the sand off his glasses with his thumb. Even when he put them back on, the words on the page blurred. Oruha kept telling him he was making progress, kept checking back every day and looking over his notes with approval, but to him, it was as if his work, his entire life, had stagnated. As if he had no purpose, no place in the world.<p>

_Maybe that's why I travel, _he thought, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. _Maybe my subconscious has already accepted the fact that there's no place for me, and that's why I wander. _

He sighed and stood up. Sitting here would do him no good. He paced the length of the living room, passing the coffee maker several times before deciding to brew another pot. Most days, the thrill of his research was enough to keep him running for hours. Recently, his work had lost its usual joy, like a diamond losing its luster.

Once the coffee maker was running, he went over to the phone. For a while, he just stood there, numb, barely cognizant of his fixation. When he finally moved to dial, he was almost unaware of who he was calling. He heard the dial tone, but tuned it out the same way musicians tuned out ambient noise when they practiced. It wasn't until he heard the voice on the other side of the line that his mind regained some functionality.

"Hey, Fujitaka. Made any progress?"

He shrugged, then realized Oruha couldn't see him over the phone. "Some. I've drawn up some likely meanings for several characters, based on their phonetic origins, but it's tedious work. How are Kentaro and Erii doing?"

"Well, they can't keep their hands off each other, if that's what you're asking."

He blinked, thoughts derailing for a moment as he tried to make sense of that. "What do you mean?"

"Didn't Kentaro tell you? He asked her out two nights ago. They're in _love_."

_Right. Of course they are. _"You seem so thrilled. Actually, I was wondering if they've made any headway on their end."

"Some. I can tell Kentaro to bring his notes to you if you need them."

Fujitaka readjusted his glasses. "No, that's fine. I'll pick them up tomorrow morning. I was planning on visiting the ruins again anyway." _Anything to get out of the house for a few hours. Anything to move forward again._

"You sound kind of depressed. You need some help or something?"

"I . . . No. Just having trouble focusing, that's all."

"Did you hit your head? Concussions can affect your cognitive ability, you know."

He sighed. "I'm fine. Thanks for the update. Bye."

He hung up before she could respond.

If he was being honest with himself—and he tried to be, especially when the truth was hard to face—he knew why he felt so empty. It had been more than three days since he'd seen the boy, and the knowledge that he'd broken his promise was wearing heavily on his mind. Moreover, the knowledge that Syaoran was alone in the orphanage, one eye bandaged and his speech still crippled, made Fujitaka wish he could assure the boy that things would turn out okay. As it was, Syaoran was fodder for the bullies.

Fujitaka sighed, then started pacing again. A dull ache had formed just above his eyes, throbbing with every heartbeat. He lifted his thumb to the point of tension, trying to drive the headache away. _I should've gone, _he thought. _I should've been there to see him off. _

A shrill wail pierced his eardrums; he jumped, then blinked to clear his head. "It's just the phone," he told himself, wondering what Oruha had forgotten to tell him. He picked up the phone and lifted it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hello," said an unfamiliar female voice. "Are you Fujitaka?"

"Yes . . . May I ask who's calling?"

"This is Macy, secretary and caretaker at the orphanage in Clow. I'm calling about a boy by the name of Syaoran."

Hope flared in his chest. He leaned forward, searching for a pen and paper, in case he needed to write anything down. "Has something happened? Is he all right?"

"He's fine. Actually, I've just consulted with his psychologist, who advised me to contact you. According to the information I was given, you were the one who found the boy."

"Yes." _Alone in the rain with no one to look after him. Abandoned and abused, like a dog left to die._

"We were wondering if you could come by the orphanage today and speak with Syaoran. I think he'd appreciate it. If you're busy—"

He cut her off. "I can be there in ten minutes." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "if that's all right."

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, as if he'd caught her by surprise. The pause was followed by some shuffling, and the sound of papers going airborne. "That . . . That should be fine. I'll arrange everything."

Belatedly, he realized how much of a strain this kind of impromptu visit must've been putting on her workload. "Thank you for contacting me. Truly, I'm grateful."

"No problem. I'll see you in ten minutes." The line went dead.

Fujitaka set the phone back on the receiver, grabbed his new cloak from the hook by the door, and went out into the desert.

* * *

><p>A red-haired woman waited for him under the awning, a clipboard in one hand and a bucket of miscellaneous toys in the other. "You must be Fujitaka," she said, brightening.<p>

"Yes." Paranoia swept through him. What if they'd changed their minds? What if the boy resented him for disappearing so abruptly?

"Syaoran's inside. I'll take you to him. Oh, I'm Macy, by the way. I'm the one who called you."

Fujitaka nodded, following Macy through the door. She set the bucket of toys in the corner, then scribbled something on her clipboard. While she did that, Fujitaka looked around, searching. In this colorful room, where his beige cloak should've stood out, he saw no trace of the boy. _Has he been taken somewhere else? Have they lost him? _

"Where is he?"

"He's upstairs, in his room." Macy's head tilted down just a fraction of a degree. A shadow seemed to fall over her face, painting her in a somber light despite the cheery surroundings. "I wouldn't call him antisocial, exactly, but he prefers spending time alone rather than with the other children. He could be shy, or he might have realized how . . . _different _he is from his peers."

"Different how?"

Surprise flitted across her face as they stepped into the stairwell. This place was less chaotic, but the conflicting color schemes gave it a sort of eerie, unbalanced atmosphere. Macy's response allowed him to put his unease aside for a moment, though her words weren't exactly comforting. "You must know about his eye."

Fujitaka hadn't actually seen the damage for himself. Someone else had always taken care of the wound behind the mask of bandages. "I don't know the extent of the damage. I wasn't the one who changed his bandages."

The caretaker frowned. "The damage is . . . quite severe. The eye itself is in tact, and the physical damage will heal, but he's blind in his right eye."

_How? _he wondered, biting his lip to suppress the exclamations that wanted to jump to his tongue. _How could anyone hurt a child so badly and just leave them on the streets? He could have died. Would have, if someone hadn't found him. If _I _hadn't found him. _

Instead of denouncing the boy's previous caretakers, Fujitaka nodded. "I see. Does he know?"

"The boy? No, not exactly. It's hard news, especially for someone who's still acclimating to new surroundings." They reached the top of the stairs. Macy turned down one of the hallways, studying her clipboard intensely, as if doing so would shut out any personal feelings on the matter. "For now, we've decided to keep treating him as we have. There's nothing we can do to change it."

"It won't help to keep the truth from him."

"You wouldn't lie to him," she said, pausing outside one of the doors. "If you want to tell him now, I won't stop you, but there are more important concerns than that. His amnesia, for one, and his depression for another."

"I understand. This is his room?" He glanced at the undecorated door Macy had stopped in front of.

"Yes. I'm going to make sure he's prepared for visitors, if you'll wait just a moment." Her fingers traced the door handle, pressing down without letting the door swing open. Fujitaka gestured for her to go ahead. As soon as she slipped inside, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He wasn't ready for this. He probably wouldn't ever be ready to admit he'd broken a promise by vanishing without telling the boy. But he'd try.

* * *

><p>The door came open with a faint creak.<p>

Syaoran glanced up, then away. His caretakers checked on him often, usually trying to get him to eat more, or go downstairs and play with the other children. He drew his cloak tighter around his body, like armor.

"Syaoran, can you get out of bed for me?" Macy asked, kneeling at his bedside so they were at eye level.

He shook his head.

"Come on now. There's someone here to see you."

"You said I couldn't have any visitors." _And I don't want to see any more specialists. _

"Oh, stop sulking. I think you'll be really happy to see this visitor."

He rolled over so he was facing away from her. All he wanted was to lie here for a while and pretend he was sleeping.

"Well," Macy said, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I'm going to let him in, so you ought to be ready to see him."

He sat up, angling himself so he was facing away from the door and drawing the cloak over his head. Armor. The cloak was his armor against the world, and he intended to keep it that way.

He heard Macy's quick footsteps, then the creak of the door as it opened. Several minutes passed as she murmured something to his visitor, but even when he listened, he couldn't make out what they were saying. There was something familiar about one of the voices, though, something that had him listening intently despite his resolve not to care. A moment later, the voices cut off, and he heard two pairs of footsteps approaching his bedside.

"All right, Syaoran," Macy said. "Let's say hi to your visitor."

"I don't want to." Couldn't they understand that? Couldn't they understand that he didn't want to talk to anyone? He'd already consented to daily sessions with the orphanage's psychologist. What more could they want from him? "Go away."

"Syaoran, turn around. This is no time for sulking."

He shook his head vigorously. "I don't want to see anybody."

Someone sighed behind him, and the sound made something in his chest tighten. The sigh was familiar, just as the cadence of the voice had been familiar, even muffled by the door. _No, _he thought. _I hate this place. I don't want to meet anyone else. _

His visitor spoke, despair laced through every word. "He doesn't want to see me."

The voice, so close, so instantly recognizable to his ears, shredded Syaoran's resolve. He turned around, sloughing off his cloak like a snake shedding its skin. _It can't be . . . _he thought. _They said he couldn't visit._

But they must've changed their minds because standing at the foot of his bed was Fujitaka.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Notes:<em>

_I give you permission to yell at me for the long delay, but before you do, I have an important announcement. _

_Some of you may already be aware, but on June 23__rd__, many users of fanfiction . net will be protesting the sudden purging of stories with explicit sexual content, extreme violence, song lyrics, and anything else they deem to be breaking site rules. This protest will consist of all of us logging out of our accounts and abandoning FFN for one day, in order to show the site administrators how much they rely on writers and readers like us. I highly encourage you to take part in this protest by staying off FFN on June 23__rd__. That means no reading, no reviewing, and no posting chapters/stories. No use of the site at all for 24 hours. If enough people participate in this silent protest, FFN will have to acknowledge our dissatisfaction, and we will be one step closer to having unreserved freedom of press. I will be participating as well, so please, take this opportunity to stand for our right to write. Thank you. _


	9. No More Tears

9. No More Tears

Fujitaka stood, frozen, at the foot of the bed as the boy turned to face him. He saw the flicker of recognition, of shock, before the boy's face went still. Silence seeped into the room, like a shadow creeping across the sand at sunset, and Fujitaka found that he couldn't say anything, couldn't justify his absence even though he'd reworked his reasons half a dozen times.

The recognition in Syaoran's eyes hardened to resentment.

"Talk to him," Macy whispered from the doorway. "He's probably just surprised."

_No, _he thought, watching the boy shed his cloak as he turned away. _If he was just surprised, he would've been asking questions by now. _Fujitaka thought of how curious the boy had been when he'd started learning the language, and how that curiosity had allowed him to soak up knowledge faster than Fujitaka could've ever hoped. Now it was as if a canyon sat between them, with no bridge in sight.

_How could I have ever thought I could raise a child? _he wondered. _How could I be so arrogant when I practically abandoned him here? _He blinked, trying to clear the film of tears from his eyes as he walked to the side of the bed. The sheets were perfectly straight, like they hadn't even been slept in. The pillow was aligned neatly with the headboard, pillowcase smooth and untouched. The room lacked any decoration except the plain white curtains drawn over the window.

He sat down beside Syaoran. The mattress sagged under his weight, springs squeaking. The boy didn't even acknowledge his proximity as he rested a hand between his shoulder blades.

He could feel Macy's gaze on the back of his neck, but said nothing, waiting. Finally, the boy spoke.

"You left."

Fujitaka winced, but nodded, letting the weight of that accusation crush the air out of his lungs. "Yes. I thought that would be better."

"Why?" The boy's voice trembled, and gone was all the adult-like maturity of a moment ago. "You said you'd see me again the next day. Why did you lie?"

He'd often heard that a child's words could cut deeper than any adult's, and he knew it now to be true. There was something so honest and unassailable in a child's logic, an innocence that punched harder than the cruelest of insults. Fujitaka bowed his head. "I thought you'd be better off here, where you had a whole network of people to look after you. I knew I wouldn't be able to take care of you, and that you'd eventually get adopted by someone who could. It was better for you to forget me and move on." _I couldn't have made that much of an impression in the time you were with me. I would've been just another memory in a growing collection._

"I don't understand."

Fujitaka's eyes began to sting. "I wanted you to be happy."_  
><em>

Syaoran stood, dragging his cloak behind him. "No. I don't know what 'adopted' means. What is that?"

Fujitaka stared at him, wondering how this had failed to come up in their lessons. It should've been inevitable—there had only been one course of action from the very beginning, and that had been for Syaoran to go into foster care. Surely, adoption should've come up in their lessons at some point?

_Unless . . . _A strange pang shot through his chest. _Unless I was subconsciously hoping that things would never change, or that I'd be the one to take him in. _

_How odd, _Fujitaka thought._ that something I thought about so much when I was at the ruins would've never even come up between us._

"Aren't you going to answer?" the boy asked, fists trembling. Fujitaka heard his sharp intake of breath, but the boy held his ground, every muscle of his face controlled.

Fujitaka's mouth went dry. "Adoption is when an adult takes in a child who's lost their parents, even though that person isn't always related to the child."

"Then why don't you adopt me?"

His eyes flashed up to Syaoran's face. The boy looked almost _annoyed_.

"Syaoran," Macy said, edging closer to them. "It's much more complicated than that."

"How is it complicated?" he demanded. "I don't _have_ parents, so why does it matter who takes me in?"

"Well, Syaoran, the adult has to _really _want to adopt, and then there's a lot of paperwork to fill out, to make sure they're a good parent."

Syaoran looked back at him, lips slightly parted, all the color gone from his face. Then, slowly, he lowered his head. "You don't want to adopt me."

Fujitaka's breath caught, but again, he found he could say nothing.

The boy retreated half a step, hair falling over his face. Then he threw his cloak in the corner and ran out of the room.

"Syaoran!" Macy yelled after him, clutching her clipboard to her chest. As the boy's footsteps faded down the hallway, the red-haired woman groaned. "That wasn't the reaction I was hoping for."

_That makes two of us, _Fujitaka thought, forehead dropping into his hands. For a moment, he just sat there, eyes closed, trying to sort through his tangled thoughts. Perhaps Kentaro had been right—if he'd wanted to be part of the boy's life, he should've put forth more of an effort to make sure that happened. He'd been wrong to waltz in, then disappear without an explanation. Worse still, he'd left the boy after promising they'd see each other again.

Behind him, Macy sighed. "He'll come around. He can be . . . sensitive."

_No, not sensitive, _Fujitaka thought. _He has every right to be upset. He _should _be angry. I was horrible, leaving him to face this place alone. _He'd always imagined the orphanage to be a dismal place. Despite the bright decorations and raucous noise of the lower floor, it felt like something was broken here. This was a place where most hopes went unfulfilled, replaced with cheap symbols of prosperity and childhood happiness. Contentment was shallow, fleeting.

And Syaoran was miserable.

"I'm a horrible person," he finally said.

"No . . ." Macy said. Then, more firmly, she continued. "No. I don't believe that. Children his age are often . . . difficult. He's still under a lot of pressure to get used to living here, a fact that's compounded by his other struggles. And children are prone to emotional outbursts like that, so—"

"But he's not," Fujitaka said. "The first few days I knew him, he showed no emotion at all. It was like that part of him didn't exist at all. Even a few days ago, he was so reserved and quiet. He's not the kind of child who gets upset over nothing."

"That doesn't make it your fault!" Macy stepped forward, knuckles turning white as she gripped her clipboard. When she spoke again, her voice was low but stern. "Every day, he tells me he hates it here. I don't blame him. We do what we can, but we just don't have the resources to give every child the attention they need. Syaoran talks to the psychologist every day, trying to remember what happened to him before you found him. It's a big strain on him, and the lack of progress has him frustrated. Just because he blew up at you doesn't make you the root of the problem."

"But I can't help him!" Fujitaka stood. "What can I do, except make things worse? Teach him more of the language? He learns so fast, he'll surpass my grasp of Clow's language within three or four years. Or should I tell him things are going to be okay, even though his odds of getting out of this place are even worse than usual?" He strode over to the corner and knelt where the boy had thrown his cloak. "What could I possibly do for him that wouldn't hurt him in the long run?"

"You could adopt him."

Fujitaka looked up. The red-haired woman met his gaze, a spark of determination in her eyes.

"I'm not saying you should adopt him because you feel sorry for him, or guilty because he ended up here. That was bound to happen anyway. What I'm saying is that if you care enough about him to agonize over it now, then maybe you care enough to make a decent parent."

"I wouldn't qualify for adoption."

"And who told you that?"

"I'm a single man in his mid-twenties," he said, the barest trace of bitterness seeping into his voice. "I'm not a permanent resident of Clow, and my income isn't substantial enough to support another person. I wouldn't qualify as a foster parent, let alone an adoptive father."

Macy sighed. "Without taking that into consideration, answer me one question: do you love him?"

Fujitaka froze, eyes going wide. He grappled with the question for a moment, trying to come to terms with it.

Macy went on. "Tell me, why did you pick him up that day in the rain? Why not leave him there?"

"Because that would've been wrong."

She nodded. "So you brought him to the police station. That makes sense. That's where most people would've brought him. But why keep visiting him there?"

"He didn't know the language. I wanted to teach him."

"Why?"

"Because no one else was going to. They all thought he was mute. He didn't speak at all those first few days."

"Yet you persisted."

He nodded.

She went on, her eyes piercing, direct. "And why did you answer my call today? The boy isn't your responsibility, so why bother?"

"Because . . ." He frowned, then changed the subject. "I know where this conversation is heading."

She grinned. "Then you'd better get a pen, because we've got some paperwork to fill out."

"No." He rose from his crouch, cloak in hand. "There's one thing I have to do first."

* * *

><p>It wasn't fair.<p>

Syaoran sat at the edge of the balcony, legs hanging between the narrow columns of the railing as he stared down at the clusters of clay houses. People moved in and out of these buildings, some tending spiny potted plants, others chatting with their neighbors. Children darted around, underfoot, heedless of their caretakers or the trappings of their homes.

It just wasn't _fair_.

The sun was hot against his skin, and he thought about how the woman from the police station had claimed that prolonged exposure to sunlight was lethal. _Will I disappear if I sit out here too long? _he wondered, glancing up at the sun, then flinching away as the light stabbed at his good eye. _Or was that a lie, too? _

Fujitaka had promised to see him the night before he'd been taken to the orphanage, but this was the first time he'd visited since making that promise. If Fujitaka could lie, then surely others could.

_But why? Why would he break his promise? _He tried to consider it objectively. He'd misunderstood many things since coming into existence. Perhaps there was something he'd missed here, too. _There must be some reason he didn't come to see me. Is there some way to cancel a promise that I don't know about?_

He frowned. That didn't seem right. _If that were the case, there would be no point in making a promise in the first place. _

"_Sometimes things happen that are out of our control, and we just have to deal with them," _Fujitaka had said the last time they'd been together. Had he known, even then, that they wouldn't meet for days after that? Had he made his promise knowing he was going to break it?

_Why would he do that? _Syaoran wondered. _So I wouldn't question him? So I wouldn't be sad? But if he didn't want me to be sad, why did he disappear? _Tears blurred his vision, and he forced his eyes to remain open, so they couldn't overflow. He'd seen some of the other children cry here—many of them, in fact, usually over things like spilled juice or a scuffed up knee. He couldn't understand why they'd subject themselves to the burning in their eyes or the soreness in their throats over something so trivial.

If he was going to cry, he decided, it would be reserved for situations that demanded it. There would be no more meaningless tears, not from him.

He unwound his legs from the railing and stood up. His eye nearly cleared the top of the barrier, yet he still felt confined, like the columns supporting the railing were really the bars of a cage. He reached out to touch the spindly poles—

—and felt a heavy piece of fabric fall over his shoulders.

_The cloak. _Without a conscious command, his fingertips traced the rough fabric, moving over the creases and folds, smoothing them as they went. The heavy cloak pressed down on his shoulders, shielding him from the harsh sun the same way it had shielded him from the rain when he'd met Fujitaka. He clasped the edges of the cloak and drew it tighter around his body, breathing in its familiar scent.

Slowly he turned, his throat tightening despite his resolve not to cry. Fujitaka knelt before him, a pained smile on his face. "I thought you might want this," he said. "The sand will get everywhere if you don't cover yourself up."

Syaoran looked down at the cloak, still swaddled around his body, then back at Fujitaka. "No," he said, sloughing off the cloak. Surprise flickered across Fujitaka's face, his smile replaced by a confused frown. "I don't need this."

Fujitaka was silent for a moment, as the wind stirred the folds of the discarded cloak.

Syaoran spoke. "I don't need a cloak to protect me from the sand, or the sun, or the wind, or the rain. I don't need words to communicate with other people. I don't . . ." His voice began to shake, and he took a breath to steady himself. "I don't need a name to know that I exist. I don't need you or anyone else to look after me."

Fujitaka bowed his head. Syaoran didn't need to know the word for "defeat" to know that was what he saw there. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not done," he said. Fujitaka looked up, the sunlight glinting off his glasses. Syaoran waited until he was sure the man was paying attention to go on. "I don't need any of those things, but I'm grateful to have them, and I don't want you to . . ." He struggled for words, wishing his vocabulary was more precise, more adult, so he could articulate this more efficiently. "I don't want you to feel like you need to give me anything, or do anything for me, but . . . If you wanted to adopt me . . ."

Before he could finish, Fujitaka wrapped his arms around Syaoran's shoulders and pulled him close. Off-balance, Syaoran stumbled into the embrace. "I don't know if I can," Fujitaka said. "But I'll try."

Syaoran wound his arms around the man's chest, burying his face in Fujitaka's cotton shirt. Somehow, the qualified agreement felt more comforting than a promise. More concrete. And Fujitaka's arms were warm and safe. "Okay," Syaoran said, looking up. "Then I'll try, too."

* * *

><p>It took a long time.<p>

Fujitaka visited everyday, always supervised by Macy or one of the other caretakers, though the purpose of his visits varied. Sometimes, Syaoran waited outside Macy's office for an hour while she and Fujitaka, along with all other necessary parties, conversed. Other times, Syaoran got to wait inside with him, watching him fill out paperwork. But often, Fujitaka visited for no reason other than to see him.

Syaoran still had the cloak. Fujitaka had picked it up when they'd returned from the balcony and given it to him. _"I want you to keep this, so that even if I'm not here, I'll still be close to you."_

So he'd kept it. Which was good, because several days passed before Fujitaka started bringing him other things to keep in his room. The first of these new gifts had been a workbook on the language of Clow, so he'd be able to review the parts of the language with the orphanage's caretakers. That had been nice because it had meant his time with Fujitaka didn't have to be limited to learning how to talk.

Instead, he spent time learning how to read.

Within a month, Fujitaka had brought him a small collection of children's books, many of which were filled with sentences that rhymed and had silly words that, according to Fujitaka, were not real words, but tongue-twisters. Fujitaka read these aloud to him every day, sometimes rereading old ones and sometimes bringing new ones to read. Following along as Fujitaka's finger traced the elegant black lines, Syaoran began to understand written word the same way he understood spoken words.

Macy somehow became less annoying to him as the days passed, though whether this was a matter of growing used to her quirks or an actual improvement on her part, he couldn't say. Either way, she seemed genuinely happy that Fujitaka was showing an interest in becoming his "foster parent"(Syaoran liked to just call him a "parent," but Macy corrected him when he did, so he used the term "foster parent" when she was around).

Time passed, every day overflowing with new knowledge, new experiences, until finally, Macy showed up in his bedroom one evening and told him to come downstairs.

He braved the stairwell, knowing that Fujitaka had dared to face it every day to see him, and that he was obligated do the same. When he walked into the playroom, a group of adults looked at him expectantly, all smiling.

"What's going on?" he asked, turning his attention to Fujitaka, who was standing at the edge of the group, beaming. Fujitaka stepped forward and knelt so they were at eye-level.

"Well, Syaoran, we've got some good news."

"Am I getting ice cream?"

The man's smile flashed brighter. "Yes, but that's not the news."

Syaoran blinked. _What could be bigger news than getting ice cream? _he wondered. _Unless . . . _He looked up, lips pulling up at the corners. "Is it done? Do I get to go home with you now?"

Fujitaka nodded, but it was Macy who spoke. "Congratulations, Syaoran. Fujitaka is officially your father now."

Confusion flashed through him. "Father? Not just foster father?"

The red-haired woman grinned. "Surprise!"

"That's why the paperwork took so long," Fujitaka said. "So what do you think? Is this a good surprise?"

Syaoran threw himself into the man's arms, heart soaring. Tears rose to his eyes for the first time since that day on the balcony, and this time, he let them come. "Yes. The best surprise ever."

* * *

><p>Syaoran sat at the table, staring at the cactus centerpiece. From the kitchen, Fujitaka watched, waiting for curiosity to get the better of the boy. Ice cream dripped down the back of Syaoran's hand.<p>

Fujitaka smiled fondly. "Syaoran, your ice cream is going to melt if you don't eat it."

The boy looked up, his expression troubled.

"Is something wrong?" Fujitaka asked. Had he already made some mistake? _Oh, god, I've been a parent for less than an hour, and he already hates me._

Syaoran pointed at the cactus. "If I touch that, will it hurt?"

_Oh. _"Yes."

"Okay. I won't touch it." Syaoran returned his attention to the ice cream cone in his hand, biting into the frozen treat. After a few minutes, he paused again. "Fujitaka?"

"Yes?"

A pair of bright brown eyes met his. "Is it . . . Would it be okay if I called you 'Father' now?"

Fujitaka smiled and walked over to the boy's chair. He set aside the sundae he'd bought on their walk back and wrapped his arms around Syaoran's shoulders. "Of course you can."

Syaoran took a deep breath. "Okay."

The kitchen fell silent for a while. Finally, Syaoran spoke.

"My ice cream is melting."

"I know." But he couldn't make himself let go of the boy. It had been a battle to get Oruha to make the excavation team stay here long enough for this, and a greater battle still to meet all the qualifications to adopt a child. He wanted to cherish the moment, before it slipped away from him. Syaoran leaned into his chest. Fujitaka closed his eyes. "I love you."

Syaoran hugged him back. "I love you, too, Father."

A sound distracted him from the sudden warmth in his chest, and he looked up to see water running down the windowpane.

"It's raining," Syaoran said with surprise.

"Yes," Fujitaka said, thinking of the day they'd met. _A lot has changed since then. But . . . _He looked down to see Syaoran staring at the rain as it pounded against the glass. _This was the right choice._

The rain beat furiously against the window, a true downpour. _The rains will make this country prosper, _he thought, as Syaoran pressed his face against the glass. _And we will prosper with it._

—End—

* * *

><p><em>Author's Notes:<em>

_Well, that's all, folks. Hope you've enjoyed this story, and I hope you go on to read some of my other Tsubasa fics. I may, at some point, write some oneshots about what happens after this, but until then, I want to thank all of you who have read and reviewed. If any of you want to share your favorite moment of this fic(or the most tremendous faults, as the case may be) just leave a review, and I'll be happy to read it._


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